Attributed to Frans Snyders

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Attributed to Frans Snyders
1579-1657
Head of a Bear
ca. 1625-1640
Oil paint.
13 x 10 1/2 inches (325 x 250 mm)
Thaw Collection.
2005.236

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Notes: 

Watermark: none.
Widely influential as a painter of animals and still life, Snyders left over three hundred paintings, approximately one hundred drawings, and numerous oil sketches. Our new acquisition, a vigorously brushed oil sketch, is the Morgan's first work in this medium by the artist, joining six still lifes and animal studies by Snyders executed in chalk or pen and ink. The subject has not been connected with a painting and, given its unconventional support--a page from a ledger written in seventeenth-century Dutch script--may have been executed for the artist's pleasure.

Provenance: 
Private collector, Paris, purchased ca. 1903; Fred R. Kline Gallery, Santa Fe, 1999; Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw, New York; Eugene Victor Thaw Art Foundation.
Associated names: 

Thaw, Eugene Victor, former owner.
Thaw, Clare, former owner.

Bibliography: 

Thaw Catalogue Raisonné, 2017, no. 362, repr.
The Thaw Collection : Master Drawings and Oil Sketches : Acquisitions since 1994. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 2002, no. 5, repr.

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