Pieter BOEL (Antwerp 1622 - Paris 1674) Still life with hunting trophies Canvas. 155 x 203 cm Monogrammed lower right PB. Provenance: - Anonymous sale, Sotheby's Monaco, December 2, 1994, no. 17, reproduced; - Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot (Mes Neret-Minet et Tessier), June 19, 2009, no. 6, reproduced. The painting evokes a natural harmony with the presence of several music thrushes, great tits, woodcocks, a barn owl, a revered pheasant, a molting mallard, a whistling cane, two rabbits, two hares, red and gray partridges and a barbet dog. Jean-Siméon Chardin was also a fervent admirer of the barbet dog, which he depicts in his painting formerly in the Roberto Polo collection (see P. Rosenberg, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Chardin, Paris, 1983, no. 49, reproduced). Here, he portrays an animal that seems to emanate deep loyalty and quiet vitality, making it the main subject of the painting. Known for his "hunting returns", Pieter Boel was one of the most renowned artists of 17th-century animal painting. He drew directly from live animals in natural settings, enabling him to reproduce the liveliness of textures. Initially trained by his father, himself an engraver, he spent some time in Genoa, before returning to Antwerp, where he was admitted to the Saint Luc guild as a freemason in 1650. He then moved to Paris, where he was commissioned, along with Charles Le Brun, to produce studies for tapestries at the Gobelins manufactory. For the tapestry known as "Les Maisons between 1669 and 1671, eighty-one studies of birds and mammals from the Royal Menagerie at Versailles. They were transferred to the Musée du Louvre and subsequently dispersed to various provincial museums.