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Description: | Remembered primarily as a painter of battles, specialising in scenes of cavalry engagement, Vrancx's extended oeuvre also included pictures of idyllic high-life genre scenes in park-like settings, such as this extensive wooded landscape with a party from the royal House of Orange returning from the hunt. Historic descriptions claim that the principal figures include portraits of the Orange family, although these have not been identified. The party is lead by a group of three mounted riders in the central foregound, whose horses anchor the composition. The lead group is accompanied by hounds and servants, and followed by two carriages carrying the women of the household. The procession occupies a broad road, which cuts diagonally across the picture plane, from right to left, before retreating almost perpendicularly between an avenue of trees in the left-hand distance. The hunting party is watched in the lower left by a group of peasants. In the left-hand distance, in a vignette between the trees, a hunt is in progress. In the right-hand middle and backgrounds, pleasure boats play in the lake and moats of a magnificent castle (unidentified). The painting is noted for its comprehensive depiction of weaponry associated with seventeenth-century fieldsports, including the only known representation (lower right) of a fishing crossbow. | Subjects: | landscape; figure; animal (horse hound) | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Vrancx, Sebastian (Flemish painter, 1573-1647) Æ Previously attributed to Vinckboons, David (Flemish painter, 1576-ca. 1632) | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=8588... | Go to resource |
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