The Boar Hunt

This boar hunt canvas of 1670, now at Waddesdon Manor, presents an unusual attribution question: Snyders died in 1657, making a 1670 date either a misdating, a workshop production, or a misattribution. If the date is correct, the work would represent a posthumous workshop output or a completion of a composition left at Snyders's death. Waddesdon Manor, the Rothschild mansion now administered by the National Trust, assembled one of the finest Flemish Baroque collections in England, and this boar hunt would have been acquired as a prime example of the genre. The boar hunt subject was consistently among the most prestigious in Snyders's repertoire, requiring the largest canvases and the most complex animal compositions. Regardless of the precise dating, the painting demonstrates the continuation of Snyders's visual language — possibly by his pupils Jan Fyt or Pieter Boel — in the decade after his death. The Antwerp hunting-scene tradition remained commercially vital into the 1660s and 1670s, satisfying continuing demand from aristocratic clients.

The composition follows Snyders's established boar hunt format, with hounds in extreme physical engagement with the boar at the centre, surrounded by horses, huntsmen, and forest setting. Whether by Snyders's own hand or a close follower, the animal painting maintains the characteristic differentiated brushwork for coarse boar hide versus smooth hound coat. The atmospheric forest background is rendered with broad, loose strokes.