Still Life with Dead Birds and Game Bag

Van Aelst lavished the same sensuous attention on this hunting-trophy piece that he devoted to his great luxury still lifes of crystal and silver: the birds are rendered so precisely that each can be identified — the blue-green kingfisher, the small red Eurasian bullfinch, the yellow-brown male bearded tit — their plumage set against the leather game bag, a sweep of satin drapery and the shadowed niche behind with a rich play of textures. Few Dutch artists painted dead game, for hunting was little practised in the northern Netherlands; the game piece only appeared there around 1640, and this canvas of 1674 belongs to that rare and elegant tradition. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.