The Wolf and Fox Hunt

The Wolf and Fox Hunt (c. 1616) at the Metropolitan Museum was produced in collaboration with Frans Snyders, who painted the animals while Rubens executed the human figures — a division of specialist labour that was characteristic of the Antwerp artistic community and produced works of extraordinary combined quality. Snyders was the finest animal painter of the seventeenth century; his studies of wolves, foxes, and hunting dogs were based on careful observation of living specimens and possessed a naturalistic authority that Rubens, for all his mastery, acknowledged by entrusting the animal passages to his collaborator. The monumental scale of the hunt canvas — 245 × 376 cm — required compositional organisation across a large horizontal format, and Rubens's solution creates multiple simultaneous encounters between hunters and prey that together form a coherent visual narrative of the hunt. The Metropolitan's holding represents one of the most important examples of the Antwerp collaborative workshop practice in the American national collection, demonstrating how the system of specialist collaboration enabled the production of works of extraordinary range and ambition.

The composition creates a dynamic spiral of violent action as horses, hunters, and wild animals are locked in combat. Rubens' powerful rendering of animal anatomy and his kinetic brushwork generate an overwhelming sense of physical energy.

This hunting scene from 1616 has been conserved over the centuries. The canvas has been relined. The violent action and multiple animal species presented challenges for conservation, particularly maintaining the textural distinctions between wolf fur, fox pelts, horse coats, and human clothing.