Crayfish, Dead Birds and Vegetables

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Arranged on a stone table are an earthenware goblet with the coat of arms of an aristocratic family and at the left an unidentifiable vegetable, two woodcocks, cheese and leeks. On the cheese stands a platter with a heap of crayfish; on the right two ducks are hung between two strings of garlic and onions.

The painting is signed on the end of the table on the left side; it is not part of a series of Kessel’s works which have survived in Slovenia. Any possible iconographic significance has yet to be discovered.

Artist Peter van Kessel

Technique oil, canvas

Dimensions 87 x 119,5 cm

Inventory number private collection

Collection 1600–1700

Restored: Čoro Škodlar after World War II; 1987 cleaned by Kemal Selmanović.
Provenance: Collection of the counts of Attems, Slovenska Bistrica; confiscated 1945; FCC, 1945 (FCC register, No. 6379); from 1959 to 1989 on loan to the Dolenjski muzej, Novo mesto, from 1989 onwards to the Narodna galerija, Ljubljana.
Exhibition: 1989, Ljubljana, No. 30.
Lit.: Zeri and Rozman 1989, pp. 129–130, Cat. and Fig. No. 30.