Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Frans Snyders
Flemish; 17th-century
Rochester, NY: Memorial Art Gallery
46%
The Fable of the Fox and the Heron. c1630-1640. Oil on canvas
The two things that redeem this painting slightly are: first, the background repetition of the foreground scene in miniature; second, the recurrence of the two main herons as a pair of tiny foreshortened birds flying off-canvas at the painting's top edge. These two features create a strange conceptual double-vision effect that doesn't seem fully reducible to the painting's ostensive allegorical aims. A couple tiny quirks, however, does not a good painting make. Mostly, this thing is stiff rendering and dull color and awkward arrangement, plus a phoned-in mise en scène. The wedge of water does a poor job framing out the action, which is defiantly lateral (like words on a page); the tree at left is caught between structuring the picture and merely decorating it; why did the vase's rim have to be so neatly parallel with the top of the hill behind it? (2025)