Boar Hunt

Around 1616 Rubens painted four large hunting scenes for Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, and in his Antwerp studio the hunt became a subject buyers asked for. This canvas, three metres wide, belongs to that moment. In 1618 van Dyck was admitted as a master to the city's painters' guild, yet until he left for England in 1620 he went on working alongside Rubens. The Alte Pinakothek sees the debt to Rubens's hunts here, and something of van Dyck's own as well. The action runs across the canvas like a frieze, an arrangement taken from ancient relief sculpture. The museum gives the figures to van Dyck and the animals to Frans Snyders, the Antwerp specialist who was working out the theme of the animal hunt in exactly those years, although the label puts a question mark after his name. Another version of the composition hangs in Dresden.