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| Title | A Boar Hunt | |
| Collection | Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle | |
| Artist | Snyders, Frans (Flemish painter, 1579-1657) | |
| Date Earliest | about 1630 | |
| Date Latest | about 1640 | |
| Signed | yes | |
| Description | This painting can be related to the sixty hunting scenes produced by Frans Snyders for the Spanish King Philip IV between 1636 and 1640. A wild boar is chased and attacked by a pack of hounds in a stream, while groups of huntsmen and dogs pursue deer in the background. These pictures were intended as part of the decoration of the Torre de la Parada, used by the King as a hunting lodge. They could be regarded as a form of courtly propaganda: hunting was associated with training in self-control and the Spanish monarch identified himself with Hercules, the courageous hunter. | |
| Current Accession Number | B.M.88 | |
| Former Accession Number | No. 238 | |
| Inscription | front cl 'F. SNYDERS FE' | |
| Subject | animal (boar, dogs); landscape; everyday life (hunting) | |
| Measurements | 211 x 333 cm (estimate) | |
| Material | oil on canvas | |
| Acquisition Details | Bequeathed by the founders John and Joséphine Bowes 1885. | |
| Provenance | Purchased by John Bowes, 1837, £60. | |
| Principal Exhibitions | After Life, Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, 2004. | |
| Publications | Koslow, S., Frans Snyders: The Noble State, Seventeenth-Century Still-Life and Animal Painting in the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp, 1995, p. 243, pl. 330. | |
| Notes | The same subject was painted for the Torre de la Parada (Museo del Prado, inv. 1759 and inv. 1762). A similar composition appears in Snyders's Boar Hunt (Galleria Nazionale, Rome). Another version, catalogued under the name P. de Vos, is at the Museo Cerralbo, Madrid (Hella Robels, correspondence, 1971; 1973) | |
| Rights Owner | The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Co. Durham | |
| Author | Dr Mercedes Cerón | |