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The Rubens House > Collection > Paintings > Rubens' environment > Still-life with dead birds
Still-life with dead birds
Alexander Adriaenssen was a productive painter of wild game and dead fish.
He was a friend and neighbour of Rubens, who owned two of his paintings. In this work Adriaenssen brings together a highly diverse flock of birds, all of which were actually eaten in the seventeenth century. In the back we see two black grouse, a black and white male and a brown female. In the basket are a duck, a kingfisher and a starling. Balancing on the edge of the table are a couple of partridges, a jay, a green woodpecker and a number of songbirds which would have been caught on branches coated with bird-lime. The basket in front contains a duck and a cockerel, plucked and ready for the pot.
Alexander Adriaenssen (1587-1661)
Still-life with dead birds
oil on panel