Circle of Paul de Vos

Essay:

Two seal pups shelter among shells and grass on a chilly windswept beach. Surrounded by seashells and vulnerable without their mother, one pup sleeps while the other cries out into the breeze.

The pair seals derive from two works by the great animal painter Paul de Vos. One a monumental allegory The Triumph of Neptune with the Fruits of the Sea (private collection, exhibited at TEFAF 2023) and the other a work closer to the present picture in The Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie, Besançon, France (inv. no. 896.1.107).

De Vos's models were in turn inspired by Jacob Jordaens and Frans Snyders' monumental collaborative work The Gifts of the Sea, 1640/50 (The Princely Collections, Liechtenstein, inv. no GE 2563), with Snyders (de Vos's brother-in-law) responsible for painting the sea creatures. Seals first appeared in Snyders' work in his early fish market scenes around 1618.

The present picture most closely relates to the Besançon work, which is dated to around 1650, though ours is significantly wider and narrower in height. The seals are almost unchanged in their drawing and they appear on a similar sandy beach. In our version grass has been painted to partially obscure the left-hand seal. The landscape and surrounding area has also been altered. The dunes and church tower of the Besançon version have been replaced by a wider sea view and the arrangement of the shells has been changed.

The artist has reworked rather than totally reimagined the composition and so it retains much of de Vos's charm and palette. These changes indicate that the work is not a straightforward copy, but a considered reworking to suit the canvas dimensions, presumably at the specification of the patron.

Provenance:

Private Collection, Spain.