Abraham Mignon

Abraham Mignon Hunting still life with a partridge, pheasant, goldfinch, other birds and hunting utensils Oil on canvas (doubled). 63 x 48,5 cm. Provenance Italian collection. - Gallery Müllenmeister, Solingen, 1979 (adhesive label on verso). - South German private collection. Literature Magdalena Kraemer-Noble: Abraham Mignon 1640-1679, Catalogue Raisonné, Petersberg 2007, pp. 270-271, no. 110. The partridge hangs upside down in a stone niche, attached by a thread - a hunted prey, and yet Abraham Mignon gives it beauty and elegance. The wings, opening to the side, are rhythmically fanned out, the white of the feathers becoming more radiant and brighter toward the fuselage, the bird's head, glowing in light ocher, rests gently on a velvet green hunting bag. There, on the table, other birds are deposited, a bullfinch, a goldfinch, a partridge, a pheasant and blue tits. Besides the hunting bag, hunting utensils such as the horn or the corkscrew-shaped decoy complete the arrangement. Mignon proves to be a master of his craft here, skilfully directing the view from top to bottom, thereby enhancing the richness of the colors and forms and, moreover, making the manifold materiality of the plumage and the hunting utensils tangible. The refinement of this still life in its coloration, composition and forms corresponds to the intended aristocratic or patrician viewer, since hunting was a privilege reserved for the higher classes. In the early 18th century, the art historiographer Arnold Houbraken already emphasized the importance of the German Abraham Mignon for Dutch painting of the Golden Age. Mignon came from a Huguenot family in Frankfurt, a city that had developed its own tradition of still life painting with Georg Flegel and Jakob Marrell. Mignon studied with Marrell and moved with him to Utrecht, a step that was to be decisive for his artistic career. In Utrecht he met Jan Davidsz. de Heem, who influenced him artistically and whose workshop he later took over. Abraham Mignon is primarily known for his flower, fruit and forest floor still lifes (cf. Lempertz auction 1209, Cologne, 19.11.2022, lot 1563). The present hunting still life, long in a private collection in southern Germany, represents one of nearly 15 works of this genre in Mignon's œuvre. If we look at their development, we see an increasing mastery of the arrangement of animals and hunting utensils, an increasing clarity and elegance in the composition, which is characteristic of the present still life. This becomes evident when one compares, for example, the depiction of the partridge here with the depiction of roosters in earlier works, whose silhouettes are more restless, whose feathers are more variegated. Abraham Mignon learned the art of hunting still life from Willem van der Aelst, among others, who ran a successful workshop in Amsterdam after stays in Italy and France (fig. 1). Abraham Mignon later expanded the arrangement of this still life once again into a larger composition, with the field fowl in the center of the picture, but with a richer repertoire of animals and hunting utensils, which not coincidentally is in a princely collection (Collection of the Dukes of Anhalt, Dessau-Wörlitz Foundation, Mosigkau Castle, inv. no. 11). Fig. 1/Ill. 1: Willem van Aelst: Still Life mit Jagdgeräten und Partridge / Still Life with Hunting Tools and Partridge, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.