File:Boar Hunt (Frans Snyders) - Nationalmuseum - 126268.tif

English: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 20:

Technical notes: The painting is in rather poor condition, being heavily abraded and extensively retouched. A layer of discoloured old varnish is present and the paint surface is encrusted with dirt. Coarse, now discoloured, retouching is visible throughout the animals and landscape, in the boar, in the dog with a black-and-white mottled coat, the dog in the right foreground, the head of the dog in the left foreground, the head of the dog at the far right, in the foreground landscape and vegetation; with scattered retouches in the sky and in the foliage at the upper right. Contours have been reinforced along the chest and outstretched left leg and paw of the hound in the right foreground. The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1985.

Provenance: (Sale, Bukowskis, Stockholm, 6–7 December 1918, lot 88, as Frans Snyders); Mr. Hallén, Stockholm. (Sale, Bukowskis, Stockholm, 5–6 December 1949, lot 112); Miss Agda Holst, Kristianstad. (Lindkvist & Sjöberg AB, Stockholm, by 1984). Purchased in 1984.

Exhibited: Stockholm 2010, no. 44.

Six hunting dogs chase a wild boar. The scene is set in the foreground of a wooded landscape opening up towards a distant valley on the left. As the huge boar leaps in profile to the left, several hounds lunge to bite the creature or race in hot pursuit, while others tumble perilously underfoot in the foreground. Depictions of hunting scenes occurred in medieval manuscript illuminations and tapestries, often included in representations of the labours of the months, a tradition that was continued in the 16th century in the tapestry designs of Barent van Orley and prints by Jan van der Straet (Stradanus) and Phillip Galle. Early in the 17th century, as Balis has shown, the hunting theme was given a new impetus by Peter Paul Rubens, who revitalized the subject with a new dynamism and spontaneity,1 closely followed by his contemporary, the Antwerp animal and still life painter Frans Snyders. Although Snyders’ game pieces and still lifes far outnumber his hunting scenes, Robels listed fifteen boar hunts by the artist.2While in Rubens’ hunting scenes, man is always at the centre of the conflict, whether in a mythological, contemporary, or exotically fanciful context, Robels has shown that in Snyders’ work, even at the outset of his career, man is but a marginal player and soon disappears altogether as the artist concentrates on the combat of animals. Very often Snyders chose to depict the moment when the dogs at last overtake their prey – the climax of the chase and the moment of greatest danger for both the hunters and the hunted. This hunting piece entered the collections in 1984 as a work of Snyders and was considered as such until its present reattribution to an unidentified artist in the circle of the Antwerp still life- and animal painter Pieter Boel.3A painting depicting a Boar Hunt in a private collection in Barcelona, attributed by Robels to Snyders (and Paul de Vos?),4 and the artist’s larger, more complex, signed painting of the same subject in Boston (Museum of Fine Arts),5 which employ the same unifying device of a boar lunging from right to left across the scene with dogs in hot pursuit or tumbling underfoot, both anticipate the action of the Vadstena picture. Robels suggested that the Barcelona painting, which she dates to the 1620s, preceded the Boston picture, the “most important work from [Snyders’] middle period, about 1625–1630”, which elaborates the design into a larger and considerably wider composition. The formal relationship between the Barcelona and Vadstena compositions seems particularly close. Snyders’ hunting

scenes inspired many contemporary artists, being repeated in numerous copies and variants produced by the artist’s own Antwerp workshop as well as by artists in his circle. The Barcelona boar hunting scene is no exception: its composition was widely known and frequently copied throughout the 17th century. Robels lists six painted copies and variant versions, the latter differing only in details like the individual hounds and landscape setting. She also mentions an engraving, inscribed “Sneidre invenit/F. Desportes pinxit”, executed by François Joullain after a painted copy of Snyders’ original by French artist François Desportes, official painter of hunting scenes and animals to King Louis XIV, who worked in the tradition of Flemish animal painting.6 Peter Boel employed a design similar to that of the Barcelona and Boston pictures in works such as his Boar Hunt in Brussels (Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts) 7 As Robels points out, Boel also produced an etching (Holl.III, 7) that is a close variant, in reverse, of the Barcelona original and an engraving by Lucas Vorsterman I after Boel’s composition indicates that a design closely related to that of the Barcelona picture was associated with Boel in the 17th century.8

While the overall design of the present painting and some of the animals, such as the boar, the hound on the far left and the one with a mottled black-and-white coat, seem derived from Snyders’ composition, other dogs, especially those in the foreground and at the far right, are more closely related to those in hunting scenes by Boel and his best pupil, David de Coninck. The two dogs lying prostrate in the foreground occur in identical fashion in a signed Boar Hunt by De Coninck in Prague (Národní Galerie).9 The treatment of the landscape in the Vadstena picture, for example, the riverbank at the lower left, also seems stylistically related to Boel’s work. The painting may even have been executed in Boel’s prolific workshop. CF

1 Balis 1986, 50ff. 2 Robels 1989, pp. 39–41, cat.nos. 221–236. Only the late works are dated, but Robels believed that Snyders’ earliest boar hunt was one which featured a peasant with a pike and dated it to c. 1615 (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Galleria Corsini, inv. no. 482); for which see her cat. no. 221. 3 Fred G. Meijer of the RKD, The Hague, kindly put at the author’s disposal a vast amount of comparative visual material on the artists Pieter Boel and David de Coninck collected over a period of many years, the study of which allowed for the present reattribution of Vadstena 1. 4 Oil on canvas, 201 x 340, Barcelona, priv. coll., for which see Robels 1989, cat. no. 225, as possibly executed with the collaboration of Paul de Vos. 5 Oil on canvas, 221 x 501, signed “F. Snÿers fecit”, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 17.322, for which see ibid, cat. no. 226. 6 For a list of these copies and variants see ibid, cat.nos. 225a–225f. 7 Oil on canvas, 178 x 236 cm, Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, inv. no. 3901. Formerly attributed to Jan Fyt, the latter picture has been convincingly reattributed to Boel by Fred G. Meijer of the RKD. Cf. a signed painting by the artist of a boar hunt (oil on canvas, 184 x 255 cm) in the Staatliches Museum Schloss Mosigkau. 8 Hollstein, III, 58, no. 7. Cf. a painting attributed to Boel (oil on canvas, 165 x 239), in the Collection of Lord Hesketh, Easton Neston, Towcester, which is identical to the composition reproduced in the etching, except for the landscape. 9 Oil on canvas, 166 x 239 cm, signed “D. Koninck”, Národní Galerie, inv. no. DO 5016. In the same collection is also a Lion Hunt by the artist, oil on canvas, 166 x 240 cm, inv. no. DO 4350. For the dog with a shaggy coat in the left foreground, cf. also a lost painting of a Stag Hunt signed by Coninck (formerly in Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. A 72, destroyed in 1943); and for the dog partially visible at the far right cf. a chalk drawing of a dog’s head currently attributed to De Coninck by Meijer, in Edinburgh

(National Gallery of Scotland, inv. no. RSA 411, as C. Saftleven). [End]