Jan Wildens, Partridge Hunting

by Atelier Liesjes

Three dogs stand at the edge of a copse, their noses and ears pricked up. The dog on the left, white with chestnut-brown patches and a swishing, bushy tail, throws its head back and looks straight up. The one in the middle walks with its nose almost touching the ground, whilst the third, on the right, dives down into the grass, half out of the picture. Above them, a flock of partridges scatters: nine birds with outstretched wings, grey-brown with pale flanks, darting off in all directions. On the left, a magpie perches on a bare branch; at the bottom right, a small songbird scurries amongst the tufts of grass. Two thick tree trunks frame the scene; between them lies an open landscape with a low horizon, green fields and a row of trees in the distance. The sky is heavy with clouds, pearl-grey with a streak of cold blue. Wildens paints the hunt at the very moment the birds are startled and the dogs have not yet caught their prey: no blood, no spoils, only tension. The style is Flemish Baroque, with its low vantage point, its diagonal movement and its sense of opulent detail in fur and plumage. The colour palette is warm and earthy: umber and ochre in the ground, sage green and moss green in the vegetation, ivory white in the dogs, and above it all the cool grey-blue of the sky. In the seventeenth century, such hunting scenes were popular amongst the Antwerp bourgeoisie, who were not permitted to hunt themselves but enjoyed watching it.
Jan Wildens (Antwerp 1576 – Antwerp 1653) became a master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1604 and travelled to Italy between 1613 and 1616. Back in Antwerp, he worked closely with Peter Paul Rubens, painting the landscapes for his large-scale compositions, and provided the settings for figure paintings by fellow ‘'s’ such as Jan Fijt. His own work consists mainly of woodland scenes, winter landscapes and hunting scenes. A lively seventeenth-century hunting scene set in a classical interior.