page_title: Pieter Snyers
section_title: Work
hierarchical_section_title: Pieter Snyers / Work
context_page_description: Pieter Snyers or Peter Snijers was a Flemish art collector, painter, draughtsman and engraver. He practised a wide variety of genres, including portraits, genre painting, still life and landscape painting. His masterpiece is a series of 12 paintings, each representing a different month of the year.
context_section_description: Snyers was a versatile artist who painted in many genres including portraits, genre paintings, landscapes, still lifes, flower pieces, animal paintings, fruit pieces, game pieces, vegetable still lifes and plants.  He painted both on large canvases and small copper plates.  He was said never to have painted a composition twice.
  Snyers painted a series of 12 paintings, each representing a different month of the year.  This series is regarded as the masterpiece of the artist and never left his studio during his lifetime.  The paintings were dispersed in 1763 when they were auctioned off.  Two of the paintings (January and July) are now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp and two (April and May) in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.  Another two, those for March and December, were auctioned by Christie's (New York, 29 January 1998, lot 3).  There is a reduced copy of the month of March in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The paintings in the series are genre paintings which include a representation of each month by its astrological sign.  The painting of the month of January in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp depicts three Epiphany singers with a big star and a few women and children with special cakes, particular to the winter season, together with a man pouring water who symbolises Aquarius, the astrological sign of January.  The painting series may, directly or indirectly, have inspired Pieter Casteels III and Jacob van Huysum to produce a series of paintings of the 12 months.
  His still lifes include outdoor settings with dead game and forest floors and indoor compositions with a profusion of small objects, fruits, single blossoms, nuts and other objects scattered across a surface.
  Snyers was also an engraver.  The British Museum holds a charming portrait of a sleeping boy by Snyers.  He also produced an etched self-portrait (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam).
caption: Aquarius or the month of January
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