Study for "The Bear Hunt" (for the Alcázar, Madrid)
Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)
c. 1639
- Medium
- oil on wood
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 70.5 x 40.6 x 7.6 cm (27 3/4 x 16 x 3 in.); Unframed: 26 x 53.7 cm (10 1/4 x 21 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- Flanders
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
On June 22, 1639, King Philip IV of Spain received a letter from his younger brother Ferdinand (1609–1641). The letter explained that the artist Peter Paul Rubens had recently completed all of the sketches for a series of paintings that were to hang in the halls of the Alcázar Palace in Madrid. Bear Hunt is one of seven surviving studies out of the original eighteen. In this scene, a bear attacks a hunter and a companion comes to his aide The others work to stave off a second angry bear. The sketch was completed in the last year Rubens's life, and the paintings for the series were never completed.
