Beskrivning: Fem hundar av skilda raser jaga två rävar ur ett skogsbryn. I förgrunden har en hund fått ikull den ena räven, medan den andra med ett språng flyr mot det mera öppna lummiga landskapet till vänster. Blå himmel med skära och blågrå moln.

Catalogue 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]

Utforska konstnärer och föremål som finns i Nationalmuseums samlingar.

Explore the artists and artworks of Nationalmuseum Sweden.

Pieter Boel | Hundar på rävjakt | Nationalmuseum