About this artwork

This picture may once have been part of a larger composition which incorporated Fyt’s A Dead Wolf (NG 530), also in the National Galleries of Scotland’s collection. Both paintings were purchased for the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) for 14 Guineas in 1866, at the sale of a certain Mr Farrar. The sculptor William Brodie RSA (1815-1881) and the painter William Borthwick Johnstone RSA (1804-1868), both members of the RSA Council (the latter being its treasurer) recommended the paintings as ‘very desirable addition[s] to the collections’.

Updated before 2020

  • artist:
    Jan Fyt (1611 - 1661) Flemish
  • title:
    A Wolf
  • date created:
    About 1650 - 1660
  • materials:
    Oil on canvas
  • measurements:
    Fragment: 92.70 x 74.30 cm; Framed: 120.00 x 100.00 x 12.10 cm / 29.00 kg
  • object type:
  • credit line:
    Purchased by the RSA 1866; transferred and presented 1910
  • accession number:
    NG 529
  • gallery:
  • artwork photographed by:
    Antonia Reeve
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Jan Fyt

Jan Fyt

Jan Fyt was a pupil of the Flemish still-life and animal painter Frans Snyders (1579-1657) who sometimes collaborated with Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). Fyt left Snyders in 1630 to set up his own studio in his hometown of Antwerp. From 1633 Fyt travelled to Paris and Italy. He was a member of the Schildersbent, a confraternity of Dutch and Flemish artists active in Rome, who gave him the nickname Goudvink (Goldfinch).