Dead Hare, Fruit and Monkey

A monkey steals grapes from a basket of fruit next to a still life of a dead hare, a cockerel, and partridge in a parkland setting. A work of high quality, the picture belonged in the eighteenth century to Graf Friedrich Moritz von Brabeck. It was acquired by Richard Wallace for his father in 1859 at the sale of Graf Andreas von Stolberg in Hanover, together with a flower piece by Weenix (Jan Weenix P102), two works by Van Royen (Van Royen P62 and P67) and a bird-piece by Hondecoeter (Hondecoeter P233). All five pictures were attributed to Weenix at the time. Such bulk buying of Weenix by Lord Hertford demonstrates the high regard in which he held the artist’s works, which probably appealed as much for their aristocratic associations as for their brilliant decorative style.