Boar Hunt
Artist/Maker
Material / Technique
Dimensionsh x w: Ram 184 x 209 cm h x w: Mått 168 x 195 cm osäkert mått
Inventory numberNMLeu 32
Other titlesTitle (sv): Vildsvinsjakt Title (en): Boar Hunt
DescriptionCatalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 192: 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 heavily discoloured layer of old varnish is present. A pronounced overall craquelure is visible, partially crystallized. Coarse retouching along the left (towards top and bottom) and right edges covers abrasion and losses of the paint and ground layers; scattered minor retouches are visible in the sky, the dogs, and the foreground soil. Provenance: Carl Edvard Ekman, Finspång, Sweden, by 1886; Axel Ekman, Mo gård. Purchased in 1990 from Louis de Geer, Sunnanå säteri, Brunna. Bibliography: Granberg 1886, no. 180 (as Paul de Vos); Göthe 1894, p. 20 no. 99 (as Paul de Vos); Granberg 1911–1913, III, p. 7 no. 21 (as Paul de Vos); Granberg 1929–1931, III, p. 72 A wild boar is overtaken by four snarling hunting dogs, and attacked from every side, as a fifth dog tumbles underfoot in the foreground. The massive boar and hounds occupy most of the picture space, with a tree and distant hills partially visible on the left. Like the previous number (no. 191), the present painting was attributed by Granberg (1886), followed by Göthe (1894), to the Antwerp animal painter Paul de Vos. Executed by the same hand (an early 18th-century copyist?), both paintings seem derived from works by Frans Snyders, in terms of composition and individual motifs, so that there seems little reason to maintain an attribution to De Vos. The general design of the present painting – though not the same grouping of dogs – and the pose of the boar, which thrusts its powerful head back in the direction of its attackers, increasing the drama of the confrontation, can be found in Snyders’ Boar Hunts of the early 1620s at Poznan (Museum Narodowe) and Antwerp (Rockoxhuis),1 as well as in a late work of the same subject in the English Royal Collection (London, Kensington Palace, The Royal Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II).2 The light-coloured dog lying on its back in the foreground is related to a type employed by Snyders, for example, in a Boar Hunt in Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado).3 A companion piece to no. 191. CF 1 Oil on canvas, 197 x 342 cm, Poznan, Museum Narodowe, inv. no. Mo 91; and oil on canvas, 198 x 315 cm, Antwerp, Rockoxhuis; see Robels 1989, cat.nos. 223 I, 223 II, illus. 2 Oil on canvas, 202 x 350 cm, signed, London, Kensington Palace, The Royal Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, inv. no. 704; see ibid, cat. no. 236 3 Oil on canvas, 98 x 101 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. no. 1759; see ibid, cat. no. 232, and cf. a drawing of a wounded dog lying on its back, black chalk, heightened with white, on blue-grey paper, 272 x 488 mm, London, BM, inv. no. 00.9.38, see ibid, cat. no. Z 50. For the Madrid Boar Hunt, see also Díaz Padrón 1995, pp. 1256–1257, illus. [End]
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