Jerome V. Jacalone

Pieter (Pierre) van Boucle became active in Paris in 1629, where he settled in the community of Flemish painters in the Saint Germain des Pres district, which lay outside the jurisdiction of the Painters Guild (Maitrise). For some time he worked with the still-life painter Lubin Baugin in the studio of Simon Vouet, where they produced cartoons for tapestries (untraced). Also a pupil of Frans Snyders, he had contacts with the still-life painters Jacques Linard and Louise Moillon, with whose style his work has affinities.

Boucle’s work had a broad appeal-and his paintings appear in inventories of royal collections and shopkeepers alike and are now mostly in private collections. Works such as Fish and Shells (Narbonne, Musee Archiologique, d’ Art et d’ Histoire), depicting a cat leaping on to a rustic table heaped with fish, have an anecdotal quality that betrays the artist’s Flemish origins. The subject is treated in a highly realistic way with great attention paid to the rendering of the different textures. Basket of Fruit (1649 Toledo, OH, Museum of Art), in which a basket of grapes, pears and apples is depicted on a stone plinth set within a shallow space, comes closer to the French style: the crispness characteristic of Moillon, however is replaced by Boucle’s attempt to integrate the still-life elements with the background through a more naturalistic rendering of light. He was said to have died poverty stricken at the Hotel-Dieu in Paris, allegedly as a result of his dissolute living.

In this very striking painting by the artist, the central figures of the dog and cat, involved in a struggle over the spoils of a toppled basket of meat and vegetables, take precedent over the muted background of the stone wall beyond. Very much like Boucle’s other works, the bloodless battle between the two antagonists, is rendered in a highly realistic style with great attention to detail in the likenesses of both the animals as well as the various vegetables strewn about the ground.