A fruit still life with a basket of grapes and a squirrel on a table

A fruit still life with a basket of grapes and a squirrel on a table, dated 1601 and held at the Museo del Prado, is a remarkably early work by Snyders, painted when he was approximately twenty-one years old and still absorbing influences from Antwerp's rich tradition of fruit and flower painting. The squirrel was a favourite motif in Flemish still life, valued both for its liveliness — introducing animal movement into otherwise static arrangements — and for its symbolic associations with industriousness and the pleasures of eating. Snyders would have trained his eye on the exquisite fruit pieces of Jan Brueghel the Elder, who set the standard for Antwerp's botanical still life in the late sixteenth century. The 1601 date reveals an already confident painter: the grapes are grouped with an understanding of translucent glazing, and the basket's wicker texture is rendered with systematic short strokes. That this early work entered the Spanish royal collections indicates how rapidly Snyders's talent was recognized. The Prado holds it alongside his more monumental mature compositions, providing a rare opportunity to trace his development from precocious student to Baroque master.

The early Snyders technique shows careful, somewhat deliberate brushwork compared to his later fluency. Grapes are rendered with thin glazes over a pale underpaint; the wicker basket exploits a dry-brush technique for the interlaced texture. The squirrel's fur, a soft grey-brown, is built with fine repeated strokes. The overall palette is cooler and more restrained than his mature work.