PAUL DE VOS School

School of PAUL DE VOS (The Netherlands, 1591 - Belgium, 1678.
"Hunting".
Oil on canvas.
Relined.
Measurements: 37 x 89 cm, 56,5 x 110 cm (frame).

The work represents a violent and dynamic hunting scene starring a pack of greyhounds chasing and attacking various prey in an open landscape. The composition is developed through an intense diagonal movement and an accumulation of animals in different attitudes of tension and combat, a characteristic resource of Flemish animalistic painting of the seventeenth century.

The scene is fully within the Flemish Baroque tradition developed in Antwerp, one of the great European artistic centers of the period. During the 17th century, the painting of animals and hunting scenes achieved enormous prestige thanks to specialized artists who often worked in collaboration with figure painters and landscape painters. These types of compositions were especially appreciated by the European aristocracy and courts, as they symbolized power, nobility and dominion over nature.

Paul de Vos was one of the main representatives of this genre along with Frans Snyders. Both developed a pictorial language based on extreme dynamism, the violent representation of animal movement and the detailed anatomical study of dogs, horses and wild animals. Their works are directly related to the artistic environment created around Peter Paul Rubens, whose influence profoundly marked the entire Flemish Baroque school.

The present composition shows several of those characteristic features: the narrative energy, the tension of the moving anatomies, the dramatic landscape and the strong contrast between warm lights and deep shadows. The representation of the greyhounds in full race and attack clearly responds to the Flemish hunting tradition destined for great aristocratic residences and noble collections.