Entry by
William W. Robinson,
completed March 07, 2019:
In addition to works in transparent and opaque watercolor (see 2001.54 and 2004.75), Hans Bol produced 66 autograph etchings and designed 266 compositions engraved by professional printmakers. Of approximately 260 surviving drawings in ink or ink and wash, around 100 are studies or models for prints (see 1994.156) .
This, and another landscape of the same dimensions in the Harvard collection (1941.14), served as models for engravings in a series designed by Bol. Engraved by Adriaen Collaert and an unidentified printmaker, and published in Antwerp in 1582 by Philips Galle, the set comprises a title and 47 hunting scenes. Plates portray hunters and fishermen pursuing a wide variety of game, from elephants and ostriches to whales, hares, small birds, and wild boars. Two of the prints depict urban fish and meat markets, where some of the prey ended up. The print after Netting Finch, plate 29 in the set, was engraved by Collaert (Fig. 1).
Bol’s drawings for ten plates in the series, including the two Harvard sheets, have survived. All are similar in size and handling of the ink and wash, and all were reproduced faithfully, in reverse, in the prints. At least half were incised to transfer the outlines of the design to the engraver’s plate. Most are signed by Bol and several are dated 1582, the year of their publication. When they appeared at auction in 1928, the two Harvard drawings and two in the National Gallery of Canada were offered in the same frame and had evidently been together since they belonged to John, Lord Viscount Hampden, whose collection was sold in 1827.
Galle presumably commissioned the designs from Bol in response to the popularity of the extensive series of hunts after drawings by Jan van der Straet, which Galle published in 1578–80 (see 1997.205) . Some of the Latin texts beneath the images in the engravings after Bol are identical to texts under prints in the series designed by Van der Straet. The smaller size and oblong format of Bol’s series may have been suggested by other suites of hunting scenes, such as the set of six published in 1565 in Antwerp by Abraham de Bruyn or the set engraved before 1572 by French printmaker and draftsman Etienne Delaune. Bol’s drawings are identical in size to the Delaune prints, and he appears to have followed the artist’s compositional strategies to accommodate many figures pursuing game within a small and pronounced oblong format.
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