2-742-353 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Study for "The Bear Hunt" (for the Alcázar, Madrid), c. 1639. Many of Rubens’s designs for large-scale paintings began with small sketches like this. Rubens captured all the ferocious energy of a hunt in swift strokes of liquid brown paint with just occasional touches of colour. The large finished painting (probably now destroyed) was installed in the Alcázar, King Phillip IV’s palace in Madrid.