Two cocks fighting, a pair of chickens and doves mating with three other chickens nearby

Among Snijders’s poultry yard scenes, which marry the realistic depiction of animals with emblematic meaning, this drawing surprises by the explicit pair of birds in the foreground, and the doves in the right background. In the related painting in Antwerp from the 1610s, only the fighting cocks at center and the chicken looking on have been retained (Koninklijk Museum for Schone Kunsten, inv. 946; see H. Robels, Frans Snyders. Stilleben- und Tiermaler, 1579-1657, Berlin, 1989, no. 203, ill.; and S. Koslow, Frans Snyders. The Noble Estate. Seventeenth-Century Still-Life and Animal Painting in the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp, 1995, pp. 287-290, fig. 387). Drawings by Snijders of similar subject are at the British Museum (inv. Oo,9.40; see Robels, op. cit., no. Z 34, ill.), and formerly at the sale Sotheby’s, 29 January 2014, lot 10.