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Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 185:

Technical notes: The painting’s support consists of
two strips of fine, densely woven, plain weave fabric,
joined by a horizontal seam c. 56.0 cm from the bottom
edge. The painting has been lined and mounted on a
non-original strainer. The original tacking edges have
been removed on all sides. Cusping is visible along the
right edge only.

Paint is applied thickly in opaque layers, especially in
the sky, over a brown imprimatura that extends to the
edges of the support. The thick preparatory layers completely
obscure the canvas texture. The deer and the
hunting dogs, except for the white dog at the lower right,
were executed with vigorous brushwork and pastose
paint over a cool grey underpaint used as a middle tone.
The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1926,
1960 and 2010.

Provenance: Possibly Nicolas Sohier, “Het Huis met
de Hoofden”, Keizersgracht 123, Amsterdam, until 1634;
possibly Louis De Geer I, Amsterdam, until 1652; Laurens
De Geer, Amsterdam; Gerard De Geer, Amsterdam;
Louis De Geer III, Amsterdam; Maria Christina De
Geer and Margareta Elisabeth Trigland, Amsterdam;
Louis De Geer IV, Amsterdam; Jean Jacques De Geer,
Finspång, Sweden. Fredrik Schlegel, Stockholm, before
1823. Purchased in 1845; KM 1861/1867, no. 1030 (as
Frans Snyders).

Exhibited: Stockholm 1977–1978, no. 103; Stockholm
2010, no. 91.

Bibliography: Cat. Finspong, Stockholm 1809, no. 6
(as Frans Snyders); NM Cat. 1867, p. 46 (as Frans Snyders);
NM Cat. 1871, p. 45 (as probably by Paul de Vos);
Sander IV, pp. 153–154 (as probably by Paul de Vos);
NM Cat. 1883, p. 68 (as Paul de Vos); Göthe 1887, p.
288 (as Paul de Vos); Göthe 1893, p. 347; Granberg
1911–1913, III, p. 8, no. 22 (as Paul de Vos); Oldenbourg
1918, p. 191; Granberg 1929–1931, III, pp. 72, 152;
Manneback, 1940, p. 558; NM Cat. 1958, p. 219 (as Paul
de Vos); Balis 1986, p. 217 n. 10; Robels 1989, pp. 97,
335–336 no. 237a (as Paul de Vos in Snyders’ workshop);
Kruyfhooft and Buys 1977, p. 36.

Thirteen hunting dogs chase two fallow deer, an older
and a younger buck. The hunt extends frieze-like from
right to left across the foreground of a wooded landscape.
As the young buck flees in profile towards the
left with several dogs in hot pursuit, the older buck is
being brought down by a frenzied pack of dogs attacking
their prey from all sides. One dog lies wounded,
pinned to the ground beneath the kneeling buck’s
powerful antlers and muscular bent left foreleg. Two
dogs sink their teeth into their prey, others press forward
on the right, scrambling out of a ditch and over a
fallen tree-trunk. In the leafy background landscape
are the scattered figures of a hunting party in the distance.
The present picture is a smaller-sized close variant
version of the signed Fallow Deer Hunt by
Frans Snyders in Brussels (Musées royaux des Beaux-
Arts), a splendid example of the artist’s larger hunting
scenes with a frieze format, dated by Robels to the late
1620s.1 The hilly wooded landscape of the present
picture differs from the spacious, open landscape of
the Brussels painting; the fleeing young buck has been
brought closer to the fallen buck in a tighter, more
compact arrangement, whereby the interlocking bodies
of the animals now occupy most of the space and
are situated closer to the picture plane; the dog biting
into the flank of the kneeling buck has been left out of
the design; the dog chasing the young buck on the
right has been moved to the far side of the hunted animal,
a pose derived from an engraving by Stradanus,2
also found in a related composition of a Deer Hunt in
St. Petersburg (The Hermitage)3; and the grouping of
dogs in the right foreground has been changed. The
motif of the young buck fleeing from a pack of hunting
dogs was frequently used by Snyders and his circle,
for example, in the St. Petersburg painting, probably
executed in the 1620s, with the assistance of his
younger brother-in-law, Paul de Vos, and another
painting of the same subject in Milan (Pinacoteca di
Brera).4
Like the Brussels Fallow Deer Hunt on which it is
based, this painting reveals the influence of Rubens.
Although compositions and individual motifs of Sny-
ders’ hunting scenes – including many of the groupings
and attitudes of the dogs – may often be traced to
Rubens, Snyders’ primacy for the development of
hunting imagery in 17th-century Flemish painting
remained largely unquestioned until Balis published
his seminal study of Rubens’ hunting scenes in 1986.5
Around 1628, Rubens probably engaged Snyders to
paint the animals in two hunting pictures (now lost),
The Calydonian Boar Hunt and Diana and Nymphs Hunting
Deer, the first instance of a collaborative effort in
this area.6 Rubens painted oil sketches of the entire
compositions, including the animals. While The Calydonian
Boar Hunt did not directly influence Snyders,7
the Diana Hunting was crucial for his Brussels hunting
picture. In the Diana Hunting Rubens introduced the
pathetic motif of the male deer sacrificing itself to
enable its mate to escape: a stag is struck down by a
spear and set upon by savage hounds – a motif traceable
to a woodcut by 16th-century Swiss printmaker
Jost Amman8 – while the doe flees for her life. Snyders
used the frequently imitated combination of the stricken
animal and its fleeing, defenceless mate for his Brussels
painting. Like Rubens, he chose an elongated
oblong canvas for his deer hunting scene, a format particularly
well-suited to the theme of the chase. Balis
stressed Snyders’ dependence on Rubens, but also
pointed out that Snyders was not simply a copyist but
an original artist, as borne out by the Brussels deer
hunting picture. The attitude of the buck sinking to its
knees was almost literally borrowed from Rubens, as
was the hound biting its ear, but Snyders made some
changes to the buck. Its hindquarters are now silhouetted
against the sky, and the distinctive dark brown band
of a fallow deer traces the backbone, giving the body
anatomical definition, a concern for anatomy also
apparent in the pronounced musculature of its left
foreleg and shoulder. In Rubens’ mythological hunting
scene, the escaping animal is a doe, whereas Snyders
shows a young buck running off. While Rubens’ hunting
scenes always include both hunting party and prey,
Snyders’ hunts almost exclusively feature animals
engaged in mortal combat, their physiognomies represented
at emotional highpoints, when raging passions
distort features. While he did not invent the theme of
battling beasts, one of the most ancient known, Snyders
adapted it to the larger canvas, a format anticipated
by sixteenth-century animal tapestries, and gave it a
new dramatic intensity and clarity by showing the
moment when the pack corners the quarry.
This painting entered the collection as an autograph
work by Snyders, but was early on reattributed to his
younger brother-in-law, Paul de Vos (NM Cat. 1871).
There remains, however, some uncertainty in distinguishing
between the two artists, who worked closely
together. As few paintings by Snyders are signed and
none dated, attributions are rarely certain and a
chronology difficult to establish. His tendency to
repeat motifs over a period of many years, and the fact
that he frequently had copies and variants made after
his direction adds further uncertainty.9 Forgotten for
centuries, Snyders’ younger brother-in-law was the
subject of reevaluation by Manneback10 and, later, by
Robels (1989),11 both of whom attributed the painting
to De Vos. Robels regarded the painting as possibly the
work of the young artist in Snyders’ workshop, but we
still know too little of De Vos’ early style to really
affirm or deny his share in Snyders’ Hunts. Distinguishing
between the two artists, Balis (1986) emphasized
Snyders’ deeper understanding of animal anatomy
and, especially in his early works, his aim to achieve
the greatest possible differentiation in the rendering of
animal pelts.12 With De Vos, on the other hand, the
anatomy of his animals often looks improbable, the
brushwork is more emphatic, and a decorative tendency
is evident in his preference for triangular compositions
as well as in the treatment of the hounds, which
are usually elongated, with spotted or mottled coats,
for example, in his signed picture of a Stag Attacked by a
Pack of Hounds in Brussels (Musées royaux des Beaux-
Arts). The Brussels and Stockholm Fallow Deer Hunts,
on the other hand, share the same overall conception
of animal forms: the tense muscles, supple joints,
sharply drawn profiles and firm outlines of the animals
all point to Snyders rather than De Vos. Throughout
both works the animals display the robust musculature,
anatomical precision and vigorous modelling of Snyders’
hunting pictures, which are more dramatic and
realistic than decorative. In many instances, however,
Snyders seems to have shared his work with a number
of assistants: the present picture, thus, seems to show
Snyders’ hand in the deer and the fallen hound beneath
the kneeling stag, De Vos’ in some of the grouping of
dogs on the right, including the shaggy, mottle-coated
hound pursuing the fleeing quarry, and an unidentified
artist’s for the remaining animals. The landscape is
similar to those of Jan Wildens, a frequent collaborator
of both artists, in which we recognize the very detailed
treatment of plants, bushes and trees in the fore-
ground, as well as the distant atmospheric vistas and
airy handling of foliage.
CF
1 Oil on canvas, 220 x 420 cm, signed “F. Snijders Fecit”, Brussels, Musées
royaux des Beaux-Arts, inv. no. 3229; see Robels 1989, cat. no. 237, illus.
Koslow dates the Brussels painting later, c. 1630–1640; see Koslow 1995,
p. 236, fig. 312. Buschmann, in the Biographie nationale de Belgique,
1921–1924, vol. 23, col. 74, attributed the painting to Paul de Vos.
The Brussels painting was copied in gallery pictures by Janssens
(Montargis, Musée Girodet) and Frans Francken (Upparc Coll.)
2 Johannes Stradanus, The Fight between the Mailed Hunter and the Bear,
engraving, from the Venationes, no. 26 (Antwerp 1578). The head and
upper body of this dog occurs, together with other sketches of animals, a
young boar, a bear, and dogs, some copied after prints by Stradanus, in a
sheet of Animal Studies by Snyders (pen and brown ink, brown wash, 250
x 380 mm, London, BM, 1946-7-187-190, Fenwick Coll.); see Robels
1989, cat. no. AZ63 (rejected), and Koslow 1995, pp. 248–249, fig. 336.
3 Oil on canvas, 196 x 336, St.Petersburg, The Hermitage, inv. no. 1331;
see Robels 1989, cat. no. 238, illus.
4 Oil on canvas, 198 x 295 cm, Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera, inv. no. 682; see
ibid, cat. no. 239, illus.
5 Balis 1986, pp. 79–81.
6 The two paintings were presented to Philip IV when Rubens visited
Spain in 1628. They were later lost in the fire that destroyed much of the
Alcázar in 1734. For Rubens’ oil sketches in a Swiss private collection; see
Balis 1986, cat.nos. 12a, 13a, figs. 82, 87.
Rubens’ final involvement with the subject of the hunt was in 1639,
when Philip IV commissioned eight hunting scenes for the summer
apartments in the Alcázar. The contract specified that Rubens was to collaborate
with Snyders, which indicates Snyders’ acknowledged preeminence
in this area; see ibid, cat.nos. 20–27, figs. 105, 110, 112, 118–119,
122–126, 131–133.
7 The motif of the hound climbing over a felled tree-trunk on the right,
which later became popular with some of Snyders’ circle, such as David
de Coninck, is derived from Rubens’ Calydonian Boar Hunt of c.
1618/1619 in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. 523) or its studio
replicas; for which see Balis 1986, cat. no. 10, fig. 69. And cf. Rubens’
Boar Hunt in Marseille, Musée des Beaux-Arts, one of a set of four hunting
scenes painted between 1616 and 1618 for Maximilian I, duke of
Bavaria, and the Landscape with a Boar Hunt in Dresden, Gemäldegalerie,
painted before 1620; see ibid, cat. no. 4, and figs. 26, 40.
8 Jost Amman, Stag Hunt, woodcut, from Neuw Jagd und Weydwerck,
1582, see The Illustrated Bartsch, 20 (Part II). German Masters of the
Sixteenth Century. Jost Amman: Woodcuts cont., ed. J. S. Peters (New
York 1985), cited by Koslow 1995, p. 236.
9 Documents often distinguish between Snyders’ originals and copies after
his works, but it is difficult to apply the distinction to surviving pieces:
Matthijs Musson, an Antwerp art dealer, thus ordered three copies after
Snyders; the inventory of the artist’s estate identifies seven originals and
seven copies; Herman de Neyt owned a Wolf Hunt “by Snyder” and a
Deer Hunt “after Snyders”; and Jeremias Wildens had a copy of a Boar
Hunt. For a posthumous inventory of Snyders’ pictures, see Denucé
1949, pp. 188–190; for Musson’s copies, p. 130; for pictures owned by De
Neyt and Wildens, see Denucé 1932, pp. 86, 163, all cited by Koslow
1995, p. 344 n. 20.
10 Manneback advocated Paul de Vos’ priority in animal painting, arguing
that Snyders, being essentially a still life painter, was not capable of representing
physical action and emotion very well. Although there is no doubt
that De Vos excelled as a painter of animals in action, it would be wrong
to downgrade Snyders’ work in this respect. See Manneback in Thieme-
Becker 1940, and Manneback 1949.
11 The oeuvre of De Vos was treated critically for the first time in Robels’
monograph on Snyders; see Robels 1989, pp. 96–99, 474–485, for the
hunting scenes by Paul de Vos.
12 Balis 1986, p. 86.[End]

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