Bear
Artist/Maker
Material / Technique
Dimensionsh x w: Mått 170 x 195 cm h x w: Ram 184 x 209 cm
Inventory numberNMLeu 31
Other titlesTitle (sv): Björnjakt Title (en): Bear Alternative title: Bear Hunt
DescriptionCatalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 191: Technical notes: The painting’s fabric support has been lined and mounted on a non-original stretcher. A thick ground hides the underlying weave structure of the support. Paint was applied thickly, wet-into-wet, the brush strokes in the dogs’ coats smoothly blended, with rich impastos in the whites. The painting is generally in rather poor condition. A thick layer of heavily discoloured old varnish is present. A pronounced overall craquelure is visible. There are localized areas of abrasion along the weave structure of the fabric support, for example, just above the back of the dog lying on its side in the left foreground. Coarse retouching at the upper left corner, along the lower left and, especially, the right edges, covers abrasion and extensive losses of the paint and ground layers; scattered minor retouches are visible in the sky and landscape (tree on the right). Provenance: Carl Edvard Ekman, Finspång 1886; Axel Ekman, Mo gård, Mariestad. Purchased in 1990 from Louis de Geer, Sunnanå säteri, Brunna Bibliography: Granberg 1886, no. 179 (as Paul de Vos); Göthe 1894, no. 98 (as Paul de Vos); Granberg 1911–1913, III, p. 7 no. 20 (as Paul de Vos); Granberg 1929–1931, III, p. 72 A bear standing upright, encircled and attacked by five hunting dogs, has seized one dog with its powerful paws and tramples another underfoot, while a third bites its hind leg. The scene is set in the foreground of an open landscape with hills in the distance. Granberg (1886), followed by Göthe (1894), attributed the painting to the Antwerp animal painter Paul de Vos, a follower of his older brother-in-law Frans Snyders. The composition of Leufsta 31 is in fact related to a Bear Hunt by Snyders formerly at Österby bruk, Sweden, and, especially, to the variant version in Segovia (Palacio Real de Riofrío), each depicting a different grouping of hunting dogs.1 The dog breeds in the present painting are also easily recognizable from paintings by Snyders, especially the sleeker, more attenuated dogs of the artist’s later hunting scenes, although here they are very feebly painted and lack the anatomical articulation and convincing psychological expression of animals in works by the master and artists in his immediate circle. The frequently copied pathetic motif of the yelping bitch lying on its side in the left foreground, its head lifted back and its belly exposed – a pose derived from paintings by Rubens and ultimately from the ancient Roman she-wolf 2 – occurs similarly in Snyders’ Boar Hunts of c. 1620–1630 at Poznan (Museum Narodowe) and Antwerp (Rockoxhuis).3 A companion piece to no. 192. CF 1 See Robels 1989, cat. nos. 250 and 250a, illus.; and Díaz Padrón 1995, II, p. 1284, illus. 2 For a discussion of this motif, see Balis 1986, pp. 78–79, and nn. 57, 58. Balis has shown that this motif was actually invented by Peter Paul Rubens, who used it for his Boar Hunt at Marseilles (Musée des Beaux- Arts) and Landscape with a Boar Hunt of c. 1615–1620 at Dresden (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie). 3 See Robels 1989, cat.nos. 223 I, 223 II, illus. The Poznan painting was engraved by J. Zaal around 1670, see Rooses 1879, repr. opp. p. 398. A drawing of two injured dogs, the yelping bitch and a dog lying on its back, formerly in a Belgian private collection, is a copy after Zaal’s print, see Robels 1989, cat. no. AZ 73. Apparently Snyders first employed the motif (the animal is a dog and not a bitch) in a Boar Hunt at Dresden (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 1196), executed jointly with Anthony van Dyck around 1620, and subsequently repeated it frequently, cf. Robels 1989, cat.nos. 308 I, 308 II, illus [End]
Collection
TechniquePainting
Object category