Estimate

12.000 - 20.000

Session 1

2 June 2026

Hammer Price

Description

Oil on canvas. Hunting and fishing composition, arranged against a dark background in brown tones. To the left, three birds hang suspended upside down, while to the right two hens are perched, facing opposite directions. In the foreground, several fish of different species and sizes are placed horizontally, with a larger elongated specimen at the centre.

70x89,5 cm

Category

Paintings

Note

Baltazar Gomes Figueira holds an important place in seventeenth-century Portuguese painting, particularly in the development of still life. Born in Óbidos in 1604, he spent time in Seville, where he encountered Spanish naturalism and the artistic circles associated with Francisco Herrera the Elder, Zurbarán and Pacheco. That experience left a lasting imprint on his painting, evident in the dramatic handling of light, the preference for darkened settings, and the careful rendering of textures and surfaces.
Although often remembered in connection with his daughter, Josefa de Óbidos, Baltazar Gomes Figueira deserves recognition in his own right, especially for the way he adapted Sevillian still-life models to a Portuguese context. The work now offered at auction belongs fully within that artistic world: suspended game birds, fish and domestic utensils are arranged before a dark background, combining close observation from life with a deliberate sense of theatrical staging. The inclusion of hens, unusual within the artist’s known output, lends the composition particular interest and further underlines his importance in the affirmation of still-life painting in Portugal.