The falconer's homecoming
Simon de Vlieger·1637
Historical Context
De Vlieger's Falconer's Homecoming of 1637 departs from his marine subjects to enter the world of aristocratic outdoor leisure — falconry being one of the most status-laden sports in seventeenth-century European noble culture. The return from a hunt, with hawks hooded and game secured, offered painters the opportunity to combine landscape, animals, and the display of social rank in a single composition. De Vlieger was evidently capable of working across genre boundaries — his skill in rendering animal forms (birds, horses, dogs) and outdoor light conditions transferred from marine painting to this more socially elevated subject. The Rijksmuseum's holdings of Dutch Golden Age genre painting encompass this work as evidence of the broad range of subject matter that Amsterdam's art market demanded and its painters supplied.
Technical Analysis
De Vlieger handles the outdoor setting with the sky-dominated compositional instinct of his marine work — landscape opens to a broad atmospheric sky that provides the scene's primary visual interest. Figures, horses, and hawks are rendered with the careful observation of an artist whose market required reliable naturalistic representation.
Look Closer
- ◆The hooded falcons on their handlers' gloves — their distinctive silhouettes and the equipment of the sport rendered with specialist knowledge
- ◆Horses depicted with attention to their individual characters and the specific poses of animals at rest after exertion
- ◆The social hierarchy visible in the relative prominence of the noble falconer and his retinue of attendants and handlers
- ◆The landscape setting and its sky — de Vlieger's atmospheric approach applied to inland rather than coastal conditions
