Beskrivning: I målningens mittparti ett lejon, som reser sig på bakbenen. Det anfalles av tre hundar, varav en hugger i lejonets ena bakben, en fjärde hund har just kastats omkull och en femte står framför lejonet och vänder sig mot detta. Till höger i bakgrunden lövträd, till vänster öppet landskap med träddungar, höjder och blånande berg. Blå till skär molnig himmel.

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 25: 

Technical notes: The support consists of two pieces
of densely and evenly woven plain weave fabric that have
been sewn together vertically in the centre of the painting.
The pieces probably come from the same bolt. Tacking
edges are present along all four edges. The motif has
been folded over the edge of the stretcher on the right
and left and also partially at the top and bottom. The
painting has been lined.
The support has been prepared with a thin, light
brownish-yellow semi-transparent imprimatura. Both
pieces of the canvas have probably been prepared in the
same way. The ground covers the texture of the fabric
completely.
The paint layers have been applied thinly in opaque
layers. Opaque dry brushstrokes in rendering the coats of
the animals. Reserves have been left for the animals in
the background and in other animals. A reserve was left
in the sky in the background for the tree on the right, the
imprimatura can be seen clearly in the foliage. The sky
was painted after the foreground and middle ground had
been completed. There are minor adjustments of the
outlines of the figures in places.

The palette consists mainly of earth colours and red,
white and black. There are pigment changes in the green
paint layer which has become brownish, for example in
the foliage.
There is considerable similarity of technique in nos.
23 and 25: in the brushwork used to render the coats of
the animals and the reserve of the figures. The same
colour changes can be found in the rendering of the
foliage of the trees, where the green paint layer has
become brownish and where highlights in mixtures of
white and yellow can clearly be seen in both paintings.
There is also the same semi-transparent imprimatura,
which can be seen in the spaces between the sky and the
figures, for instance. The painting underwent conservation
treatment in 1926

Provenance: Drottningholm 1845, no. 400 (as anonymous
master). See further under no. 21 (Drh 329).
In the foreground of a hilly, wooded landscape, a lion
with upraised legs, charging towards the right, is
encircled and cornered by four hunting hounds. One
dog sinks its teeth into the lion’s hind leg, while another
tumbles helplessly underfoot, with arched back and
legs flailing in the air. On the right, the familiar
gnarled oak trees.

This painting is nearly identical in the composition,
the poses and treatment of the animals and the landscape
setting, to a signed Lion Hunt in Prague
(Národní Galerie)1 by David de Coninck, a pupil of
Pieter Boel’s. The Prague picture includes an additional
hunting dog pressing forward towards the prey on the
left, and another lying wounded in the right foreground.
Both pictures seem to have been executed by
the same hand. There exists a close variant of the design
employed for these lion hunting scenes, known from a
frequently copied picture formerly at Potsdam-
Sanssouci,2 which depicts a more muscular lion with a
fuller mane and includes a different breed of hunting
dogs (Ulmer dogs?). The pose of the powerful charging
lion in all of these examples was modelled after Snyders’
Two Young Lions Pursuing a Roebuck in Munich (Bayerische
Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek).3

A print depicting a Lion Hunt, executed by Lucas
Vorsterman I after an original design by Boel, demonstrates
Boel’s employment of a hunting scene similar to
that of De Coninck’s Prague picture.4
CF
1 Oil on canvas, 166 x 240 cm, signed “D. Koninc”, Prague, Národní
Galerie, inv. no. DO 4350, see photo on file at the RKD, The Hague.
2 Oil on canvas, c. 188 x 264 cm, formerly Potsdam-Sanssouci, Staatliche
Schlösser und Gärten, inv. no. GKI 5158 (destroyed during WWII),
there attributed to Paul de Vos; see Robels 1989, cat. no. A245, as possibly
an early work by Jan Fyt. Robels lists five copies of this composition,
but more are known.
3 Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, inv. no.
631, see Robels 1989, cat. no. 259, illus. For the dog tumbling on its back
in the foreground of Drh 336 cf. a black chalk study by Snyders of a hunting
hound fallen on its back in London, British Museum, inv. no. 00.9.38,
see Robels, cat. no. Z 50, illus.
4 Lucas Vorsterman, Lion Hunt after Pieter Boel, published at Antwerp by
Cornelis Galle, etching.[End]