Stillleben mit Rehbock, Blumen, Früchten und Hummer

This large-format still life of 1634 assembles a roebuck, flowers, fruit, and a lobster on a table — a combination that was characteristic of Snyders's mature production in the 1630s when his compositions grew in ambition and variety. The Munich Central Collecting Point, where the work is now held, became the repository for art confiscated by Allied forces after World War II, and many works there have complex provenance histories. Snyders's technique of combining dead game from the hunt with cut flowers and exotic seafood such as lobsters created a genre of sumptuous vanitas-adjacent imagery: the lobster's brilliant red, the flower's transient beauty, and the dead deer all point toward themes of mortality and the ephemeral nature of earthly pleasures even as they celebrate abundance. This dual register — celebration and memento mori — was a sophisticated marketing proposition for wealthy Flemish and Spanish buyers who wanted visual luxury with theological defensibility. The inclusion of a roebuck specifically, rather than a stag, indicates a smaller domestic hunt rather than grand aristocratic deer stalking.

Snyders deploys the lobster's vermilion carapace as a powerful chromatic accent anchoring the lower register, balanced against the warm rust-brown of the deer's coat above. Flower petals are rendered with delicate impasto, contrasting with the smoother handling of the fruit skins. The composition is structured along a slight diagonal, with the deer's head angled downward to guide the eye across the full width of the canvas.