Deer Hunt

Four metres of canvas, and nearly all of it is dogs and deer. Frans Snyders turned out pictures on this scale in the 1620s for the walls of great houses, where a hunt was the expected subject for a hall or a dining room, at roughly the size of a tapestry and at a fraction of the price. Hunting on that scale was a privilege of rank in the Netherlands of the time, and the men who bought these canvases were the men entitled to it. Snyders was Antwerp's specialist. Painting there worked by division of labour, and when Rubens needed an eagle or a pack of hounds in one of his own compositions he sent for Snyders, who supplied animals and fruit to Jordaens and others as well. The two animals being brought down here are fallow deer, the species kept in parks.