Fox Hunt
Artist/Maker
Material / Technique
Dimensionsh x w: Mått 165 x 243 cm (dagermått)
Inventory numberNMDrh 329
Other titlesTitle (sv): Hundar på rävjakt Title (en): Fox Hunt
DescriptionCatalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 21: Technical notes: The support consists of two pieces of plain weave fabric joined vertically in the centre of the painting. Cusping is visible on the left edge. The painting has been lined. The preparatory layers cover the structure of the fabric completely. The opaque paint layer is applied thinly and covers the preparatory layer completely. No reserves appear to have been left for the animals and the execution is lifeless. There are impasto brushstrokes in the highlights in the clouds. There are distinct long brushstrokes rendered with dry paint. In areas the paint is laid on densely in distinct brushstrokes and with very little medium in a ‘scumbling’ technique to render the coats of the animals so that it partly covers the paint layer below. Minor adjustments of contours. The depiction of the foliage differs from nos. 23, 24 and 25 so that in this painting it is less descriptive than in the other paintings. The painting also seems to display technical differences from nos. 23 and 25, but is closer to no. 24. The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1928. provenance: Probably from a set of eight hunting pictures purchased in Brabant in late 1668 by the painter Christian Thum for the Swedish Dowager Queen Hedvig Eleonora and offered by her as a New Year’s gift to her fourteen-year-old son Karl (as Crown Prince); Karl XI, Kungsör; Drottningholm 1845, no. 398 (as anonymous artist). bibliography: Strömbom 1940, p. 36; Hahr, 1940, p. 56; Rapp, 1951, p. 36; Cederlöf 1977, pp. 255–256 Two foxes, fleeing towards the left, are followed by a blood-thirsty, frenzied pack of five hunting dogs in hot pursuit. One fox has been overtaken and cast to the ground by a slender greyhound stretched to the maximum as it sinks its teeth into the exposed neck of its prey. The present Fox Hunt belongs to a set of five 17thcentury Flemish hunting scenes preserved at Drottningholm Palace near Stockholm. Probably, these can be identified as being from a set of, originally, eight hunting pieces purchased around Christmas in 1668 by the Swedish Dowager Queen Hedvig Eleonora from a local painter, Christian Thum, as a New Year’s gift for her fourteen-year-old son, Crown Prince Karl, the successor to the Swedish throne. The set is listed in the Queen’s royal household accounts for the year 1669, and in his receipt Thum, an alderman in the Stockholm painters’ guild in 1667–1669, specified that it consisted of eight large hunting pieces at one hundred Swedish copper “dalers” apiece.1 According to Rapp (1951), Thum had probably purchased the pictures directly from the unknown artist’s studio during his visit to the province of Brabant in the South Netherlands in the summer/ autumn of 1668, a terminus ante quem for the set.2 In addition to fox hunting, the subjects include hunting of stag, wild boar, bear and lion. Only the struggle between hounds and quarry is depicted in each piece. Monumental dramatic paintings of animals and hunting were an especially fruitful genre in Flemish art, defined by Peter Paul Rubens and popularized by the Antwerp animal and still life painter Frans Snyders. 3 From Rubens’ hunting pictures Snyders learned how to arrange his dogs and their prey in pulsating clusters of dynamic energy, while in his oeuvre, unlike that of Rubens, most of the hunts exclude man from the stage of action, which features animals engaged in mortal combat. Most Flemish hunting scenes represent the hunting of European animals, boar, stag, deer, wolf and bear, but occasionally exotic creatures such as lions or bulls are represented. In the art historical literature and sale catalogues the names of Frans Snyders, Paul de Vos and Jan Fyt, are most often connected with such works, but in many cases the attributions are mistaken. Many other animal painters were active in the field, including talented artists such as Pieter Boel and his pupil David de Coninck. Although compositions and/or individual motifs often may be traced to original designs by Snyders, the animals in the Drottningholm pictures are portrayed quite differently: they often seem almost weightless, lacking the robust musculature, anatomical precision and vigorous modelling of the animals in Snyders’ hunting scenes. By silhouetting the prey against the sky, the artist achieves a theatrical decorativeness, a tendency also evident in the treatment of the hounds. The triangular compositional scheme preferred in these pictures also contributes to their decorative aspect, quite different from Snyders’ more realistic work. Indeed, the pictures in the Drottningholm set seem stylistically more closely related to hunting scenes by Pieter Boel. A large number of hunting pieces built around the same compositional principle as, for example, a Boar Hunt in Brussels (Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts) attributed to Boel, differing only in details of the dogs and landscape, were produced at Antwerp in this period. Variously attributed to artists such as Snyders, De Vos, Fyt and Boel, they are most closely related to Boel’s work, though usually not autograph. Like this group of hunting scenes, the Drottningholm pictures were undoubtedly executed by artists in Boel’s immediate circle, probably by assistants in his prolific workshop.4 Chief among those artists was Boel’s most talented pupil, the young David de Coninck, who was still working in his master’s studio in the early 1660s. The signed works by De Coninck with which some of these hunting scenes (nos. 21–25) may be compared, in terms of the overall design, the treatment of the animals and the landscape setting, include a Boar Hunt and a Lion Hunt in Prague (Národní Galerie); also comparable is a Boar Hunt in Madrid (Museo Lazaro Galdiano). A taste for hunting pictures was well established and widespread in Flanders by the 1640s, and examples were already being exported all over Europe by Antwerp art dealers such as Matthijs Musson.5 Courtly hunting scenes such as those at Drottningholm attracted princes and noblemen, most of them, like the young Swedish Crown Prince Karl, passionate lovers of the chase (the hunt being a privilege of the upper class).6 Decorative objects for aristocratic houses, such pictures found a home in congenial surroundings, a hunting lodge or country house, or a gallery devoted to works of this type. CF 1 Queen Hedvig Eleonora’s Royal Houshold Accounts. Kassaräkn. 1669, p. 13 and fols. 60, 64 (SlA), see Rapp 1951, p. 36. 2 According to Rapp, Thum would not have been able to acquire such an extensive series of hunting pieces in Sweden at that time. Instead, he suggested that he may have purchased the paintings directly from the animal painter Paul de Vos’ Antwerp studio; see Rapp 1951, p.36; cf. Strömbom in Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 1940. Thum is recorded as having visited Brabant twice; the first trip probably took place in 1666; see Rapp, pp. 35–36. 3 See Balis 1986, esp. pp. 76–86; Robels 1989, pp. 90–117; and Koslow 1995, pp. 219–257. 4 Tentatively suggested to the author by Fred G. Meijer of the RKD, The Hague, who has devoted himself to the study of the whole group of Antwerp-produced hunting pictures, filed under the name of the “Master of the Antwerp Hunting Pictures”; by oral communication on 24 November 2005. 5 For the information about the trade in hunting pictures by and after Snyders (and by other artists), especially to France and Spain, see Denucé 1949, pp. 9–10, 168–169, 175, 187–190; Duverger 1968, pp. 39, 107, 223; Balis 1986, p. 83, n. 72; and Koslow 1995, p. 248. 6 See Rapp 1951, pp. 75ff. [End]
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