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Artist or Maker: Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen, Westphalia 1577-1640 Antwerp)

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Provenance: Edward W. Lake; Christie's, London, 12 July [=2nd day] 1845, lot 91 (18 gns. to Bland).
D. Robertson Blaine; Christie's, London, 30 May 1857, lot 75 (10 gns. to Robinson).
Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913); Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 7-8 May 1868, lot 41; purchased in that year by
Sir Francis Cook, 1st Bt., Visconde de Monserrate (1817-1901), and by descent in the Garden Gallery (no. 182), Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey, to
Sir Francis Cook, 4th Bt. (1907-1978), the late husband of Brenda, Lady Cook.

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Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1873, no. 183.
London, New Gallery, 1898, no. 110.
London, New Gallery, 1900, no. 118.
Brussels, Nouveau Palais du Cinquantenaire, Exposition d'Art Ancien, L'Art Belge du XVIIe Siècle, 1910, no. 405.
London, Royal Academy, Exhibition of 17th Century Art in Europe, 1938, no. 60.
Bedford, Central Library Gallery, and Nottingham, Art Gallery, and elsewhere, Dutch and Flemish Paintings of the Seventeenth Century from the Cook Collection, organised by the Art Exhibitions Bureau, December 1946-July 1947, no. 46.
Bath, Holburne Museum of Art, on loan from the Cook Collection, 1948-1953, no. 341.
Jersey, Art Gallery, The Kleinwort Benson Hidden Treasures of Jersey Exhibition, 1992.

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Literature: J.C. Robinson, Memoranda on Fifty Pictures, London, 1868, no. 38.
E. Dillon, Rubens, London, 1908, pp. 117 and 232.
An Abridged Catalogue of the Pictures at Doughty House, Richmond, belonging to Sir Frederick Cook Bart., Visconde de Monserrate, 1914, p. 29, no. 182, in the Garden Gallery.
J.O. Kronig, A Catalogue of Paintings at Doughty House and Elsewhere, in the Collection of Sir Frederick Cook Bt., II, Dutch and Flemish Schools, London, 1914, p. 90, no. 341, pl. XIX.
M.W. Brockwell, 'The Cook Collection Part II - The Flemish and Dutch Schools', Connoisseur, XLVIII, May 1917, p. 24, illustrated p. 24.
L. Burchard, 'Echte und unechte Rubenskizzen', Sitzungsberichte der Kunstgeschichtlichen Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1931, pp. 7-8.
[M.W. Brockwell], Abridged Catalogue of the Pictures at Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey, in the Collection of Sir Herbert Cook, Bart., London, 1932, p. 76, no. 341.
G. Glück, Die Landschaften des Peter Paul Rubens, Vienna, 1945, p. 71, under no. 37.
L. van Puyvelde, Les Esquisses de Rubens, 1948, pp. 72-3, no. 25. [E. Haverkamp Begemann] exhibition catalogue, Olieverfschetsen van Rubens, Museum Boymans, Rotterdam, 1953, p. 73, under no. 54 (preferring the copy, until recently in the Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent).
C.R. Bordley, Rubens ou Snyders?, Paris, 1955, pp. 81 and 147, fig. 80, as by Snyders.
C.R. Bordley, La Légende de Rubens, [n.d.], p. 30, illustrated p. 33, as by Snyders.
L. van Puyvelde, in exhibition catalogue, Le Siècle de Rubens, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 1965, p. 200, under no. 210.
J.S. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens, A Critical Catalogue, Princeton, 1980, I, pp. 306 and 339-40, no. 250, 339-40; II, pl. 272.
M. Winner, 'Zu Rubens' 'Eberjagd' in Dresden (Landschaft Historienbild)', in Peter Paul Rubens, Werk und Nachruhm, 1981, pp. 160-1, 182, no. 10.
W. Adler, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XVIII, I, Landscapes, London and Philadelphia, 1982, pp. 140-1, under no. 41, fig. 117.
A. Balis, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XVIII, II, Hunting Scenes, London and New York, 1986, pp. 218-33, pp. 237-9, no. 20a (the basis for the commentary below.
M. Jaffé, Catalogo Completo Rubens, Milan, 1989, no. 1385.

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Notes: PROPERTY SOLD AT THE DIRECTION OF BRENDA, LADY COOK (LOTS 18-25)

Described by Michael Jaffé as a 'meraviglioso bozzetto', this is a beautiful example of Rubens' later style when working at a time when he preferred to give to his studio the task of working up his ideas into paintings for patrons. It brilliantly demonstrates both his incredibly fluent handling of the brush and his telling mastery in conveying narrative drama.

Rubens turned to the story of Atalanta and Meleager hunting the boar on six occasions as, following his return to Antwerp in 1608, he injected a new, highly charged drama into the hunting scene genre, which he developed to satisfy demand from his aristocratic clients. The Cook collection sketch comes towards the end of his long engagement with the story, told by Ovid in Book VIII of the Metamorphoses, and was selected by him as appropriate for inclusion as part of a commission of works by the Cardinal Infante Ferdinand on behalf of his brother, the King of Spain. This commission is first referred to in correspondence of June 1639, just under a year before the artist's death.

The paintings were destined for King Philip IV's summer apartments in the Alcázar; many of them later formed part of the rich decoration, devised by Velázquez, of the prestigious pieza ochavada. Nearly all were destroyed in the fire of 1734, including the Calydonian Boar Hunt, for which the Cook picture was the modello.

Except perhaps the bear - still found in Europe in Rubens' time, and a hunt of which he included in the 1639 commission - the boar was (and is) the most dangerous wild animal in Europe and thus a favourite beast of the chase. In fact Rubens painted boar hunts without recourse to Ovid; but Ovid's story of the chase was to be preferred, as it allowed the inclusion of a comely, brave, young woman - Atalanta - as a participant, and the consequent coda of disastrous love on Meleager's part. Of such, Rubens' patrons would have been well aware; but the artist never dwelt on it, preferring - as tradition dictated - to concentrate on the killing of the boar.

The tradition stretched back to Classical times, in the form of bas-reliefs on Roman sarcophagi and this, and of course the fact that Ovid was a Classical Roman author, provided a crucial additional attraction to Rubens, the epitome of the pictor doctus, and his educated audience. Indeed, Rubens' first treatment of the story not only proclaimed his knowledge of Ovid, but also of Roman visual art, as it was inspired by Classical bas-reliefs and free standing sculpture (Balis, no. 1). In particular, with the pose of Meleager, standing determinedly ready to strike, which was inspired by the antique, Rubens remained satisfied for the whole of his career. For him, this Roman invention, whether seen from front or the back, typified the bravery of the King's son who had organised the hunt of the boar that had been sent by the goddess Diana, to devastate his country, Calydon, because of disrespect shown to her.

It was rather by Atalanta that Rubens - ever appreciative of the female body - was fascinated. Ovid tells that she was 'the pride of the Arcadian woods. A polished button clasped her robe at the neck; her hair plainly dressed was caught up in one knot... her left hand held a bow. As for her face, it was one which you could truly say was maidenly for a boy or boyish for a maiden...' (from the Loeb translation, as are other quotations below). In the Cook sketch Rubens omitted, or forgot to include, the quiver which hung from her left shoulder.

In his early formulations, Rubens followed Roman precedent by placing Atalanta beside Meleager, but then in the 1620s, perhaps inspired by a rare print by the anonymous, early 16th century Italian artist known as the Master I.B. with the bird (fig. 1) he placed the two protagonists on either side of the boar, thus emphasizing their courage (Balis, no. 12a). In the famous Boar Hunt in Dresden, Rubens had had the idea of depicting the boar cornered beneath a fallen tree at the edge of a wood; a huntsman and hounds clamber over the tree trunk as the kill is made. This was the essential idea, devised some twenty years earlier, that Rubens brilliantly combined with his new configuration in the Cook sketch. The adaptation, centred on Atalanta's agile, urgent leap to clear the fallen tree trunk, is the mark of Rubens' genius.

Ovid tells how Meleager assembled a band of youthful heroes 'fired with the love of glory' to kill the boar, including the twins Castor and Pollux, who alone of the band are depicted here, riding towards the boar. In fact they had failed to wound it, and Ovid tells how, then, Meleager fired her arrow which 'just grazed the top of the boar's back and remained stuck behind his ear, staining the bristles with a trickle of blood'. In the sketch, the hounds seem to have dislodged the arrow, but the stain of blood can be made out clearly.

Meleager is surrounded by a pack of hounds, and here, too, Rubens brought a new intensity to the struggle between dog and boar: one leaps on the boar's back and another, trampled on, still manages to twist up to bite its prey. Both these works may have been inspired by a drawing of the Calydonian Boar Hunt by Giulio Romano, which Rubens probably owned.

Rubens accurately conveyed Ovid's description of the setting of the kill: 'There was a dense forest... [and] a deep dell where the rainwater from above drained down; the lowest part of this marshy spot was covered with growth of pliant willows... with an undergrowth of small reeds. From this covert the boar was roused and launched himself with a mad rush against his foes. The grove is laid low by his onrush.'
The artist had rapidly sketched this exciting scene, outlining the two main figures and the boar first; probably painted later were the hounds and then Castor and Pollux against the dark forest. In the trees, in the centre and to the right, are a series of small scratch marks made in the still wet paint. Such marks are found in other sketches by Rubens; as has been suggested (by Nico van Hout 'The Oil Sketch as a Vehicle for Rubens's Creativity', in exhibition catalogue, Drawn by the Brush, Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens', The Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Conn. etc., 2004, pp. 79-80), they were probably made by his maulstick as he applied light, finishing touches to this work moving from the left of the support. They afford a tantalising insight into the artist's working method.

The group of hunts ordered in 1639 is stylistically heterogeneous as far as can be judged from the preparatory sketches and the few paintings that survived the fire of 1734. It has been remarked by Julius Held and Arnout Balis, the two scholars to have most recently studied the series in depth, that the Cook sketch differs in style from the others, and it may well have been executed earlier than 1639, perhaps early in that decade. If such was the case it may have been conveniently to hand when Rubens cast about, suffering increasing bouts of illness, to fulfill the further demands of the Spanish crown. It may also have been to hand to have inspired his last rendition of the subject (Prado Museum), whose extended composition, set against a looming forest, was among the paintings in Rubens's collection when he died and was subsequently also acquired by Philip IV.

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