Archduke Leopold Wilhelm Hunting Heron (ca. 1652–1656) by David Teniers the Younger

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm Hunting Heron or Heron Hunting Scene with Archduke Leopold Wilhelm is an oil-on-canvas painting executed ca. 1652–1656 by the Flemish artist David Teniers the Younger, now in the Louvre Museum in Paris. A simple scene of falcons being used to hunt heron on the surface, it conceals a political allegory.[1]

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria became governor of the Spanish Netherlands in 1647, making Teniers his official court painter and curator of his art collection in the region's capital, Brussels, seen in the background.[2] Five years later the Prince de Condé (loyal to Philip IV of Spain) took his army to the Spanish Netherlands, leading to a conflict with Louis XIV's France in the south of the Spanish-held region, a conflict which set the context for the painting.[3][4]

At that time a struggle between a heron and a falcon was a commonly-held symbol of a battle with an uncertain outcome,[5] with the heron here representing the Spanish Netherlands, under attack from both France and the Dutch Republic (the two falcons shown) but still hopeful of victory rather than resigned to defeat.[6]

Until 1784 it was in the collection of Joseph Hyacinthe François-de-Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil, France's Grand Falconer. Hit by financial problems, he sold off his art collection in two public auctions in 1784 and 1787.[7] Hunting Heron was bought as lot 32 at the first sale by Louis XVI, along with around thirty other paintings, mostly Flemish and Dutch and all intended for the royal collections in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre Palace.[8][9]

References

  1. ↑ (in French) "BALaT entry".
  2. ↑ (in French) "Éditions Larousse, « Archive Larousse : Dictionnaire de la Peinture - tempera - Teniers (les) »". Archived from the original on 2021-12-12. Retrieved 2021-12-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  3. ↑ (in French) "Base Joconde entry".
  4. ↑ (in Italian) "RKD Images entry".
  5. ↑ (in French) "Symbolorum et emblematum ex volatilibus et insectis desumtorum centuria tertia collecta, Joachim Camerarius, édition de 1654, p. 274-275 »".
  6. ↑ (in French) "Louvre Collections entry". 1652.
  7. ↑ (in French) Catalogue raisonné d'une très-belle collection de tableaux des écoles d'Italie, de Flandre et de Hollande ; qui composoient le cabinet de M. le comte de Vaudreuil, grand-fauconnier de France . Par J. B. P. Le Brun, peintre. La vente s'en fera le mercredi 24 novembre 1784, & jours suivans, de relevée, rue Plâtrière, hôtel de Bullion..., 1 January 1784, pages 44-45. 1784.
  8. ↑ (in French) Teniers : huit reproductions fac-simile en couleurs, P. Lafitte (Paris), 1913 - p. 31-32. 1913.
  9. ↑ (in French) Landon, Charles Paul (1825). "« Annales du musée et de l'école moderne des beaux-arts: École Flamande, Volume 4 [archive] », par Charles Paul Landon, 1825, p.22".
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