Study of a brown bear

Dated 1671 and held at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, this study of a brown bear was painted during Boel's Paris period when he had access to the royal menageries at Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye where exotic and large animals were kept. Bears were among the most impressive large animals available in European menageries and had been depicted in Flemish painting from at least the early seventeenth century, but the brown bear's dense, layered winter coat and powerful musculature presented particular rendering challenges. The Musée Fabre holds one of provincial France's most distinguished collections of old master paintings, and this Boel study represents the natural history wing of that collection's Flemish holdings.

Brown bear fur presents the greatest technical challenge of any of Boel's animal subjects: the coat's extreme density, the layering of a water-resistant outer coat over thick underfluff, and the colour variation from near-black on the legs to warm brown on the back require sustained systematic handling. Boel likely worked from a live or recently deceased specimen, given the accuracy of the musculature visible through the fur.