Vixens Chased by Dogs

The Prado dates this canvas to 1630-1640, and for its first two centuries it hung in Spanish royal palaces, where hunting was an everyday occupation of the court. The inventory drawn up in 1834, after Fernando VII died, lists it plainly as foxes pursued by dogs, by Snyders. In those same years a Madrid press lithographed the composition for a published set of the king's pictures. The painting itself is not normally on view. It came out of storage in the winter of 2014 for the museum's exhibition about Goya's Madrid, and was printed in the catalogue chapter on hunting, the subject Goya had started with in his first tapestry cartoons in 1775.