Hare Hunting - YCBA Collections Search

Francis Barlow, 1622–1704, British, Hare Hunting, undated

Creator:: Francis Barlow, 1622–1704
Title:: Hare Hunting
Date:: undated
Medium:: Pen and brown ink, and gray wash on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper
Dimensions:: Sheet: 6 7/8 × 9 7/8 inches (17.5 × 25.1 cm), Frame: 17 1/4 × 23 1/8 × 1 1/4 inches (43.8 × 58.7 × 3.2 cm)
Credit Line:: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:: Public Domain
Accession Number:: B2001.2.623
Classification:: Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:: Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:: birds | buildings | dogs (animals) | fence | hare | horse (animal) | horseback riders | horseback riding | hounds (dogs) | hunt | hunters | hunting | landscape | men | plants | sporting art | trees
Access:: Accessible by appointment in the Study Room [Request]
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Link:: https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:47086
Export:: XML
IIIF Manifest:: JSON

This drawing offers a salient contrast, both in technique and composition, to Barlow’s “Man Hunting with a Pointed Staff and a Hound”. The use of wash gives this boisterous composition nuance and substance; its tonal gradations made it well suited for James Collins to make a mezzotint after this drawing. Barlow’s distinctive penciling, with its nervous baroque delineations, aptly renders foliage and the animals’ furriness. Equally distinctive is Barlow’s staging of the action, where the whole surface is used. The artist’s apparent reluctance to leave empty spaces often amounted, in many of his works, to an odd assemblage of birds and animals, as if one were contemplating a curiosity cabinet. Yet, in the present drawing, a great sense of coherence and movement emerges as the emphasis is given to the chase rather than to the catch; the action, hemmed in an imaginary Italianate landscape (distant ruins, bell tower, etc.), flows effortlessly from an enclosed woody space out to an open field.

Although undated, this drawing shares many features of one of Barlow’s compositions for his Aesop's Fable 41, “The Hares and Storm” (1666). The rising heron is found elsewhere in Barlow's oeuvre (“Herons”, undated drawing, Tate, London; “Animals in landscape”, undated drawing, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; “Hares and Storm", undated drawing, British Museum, London). This motif demonstrates his skills at integrating drawings of birds and animals, done from life, into more formal compositions.

Stéphane Roy

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, cat. no. 10, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)

In the Company of Cats and Dogs (The Blanton Museum of Art, 2014-06-22 - 2014-09-21) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Royal Academy of Arts, 2007-10-20 - 2008-01-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : A Passion for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth (Yale Center for British Art, 1987-09-19 - 1987-11-08) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth (British Museum, 1987-06-18 - 1987-08-31) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

English Drawings and Watercolors from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (Yale University Art Gallery, 1965-04-15 - 1965-06-20) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

A loan exhibition of English drawings and watercolours from the collection of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia, P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London, 1964, cat. no. 3, Pl. 3, N5247.M385 L62 (YCBA) [YCBA]

An exhibition of English drawings and water colors from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, February 18-April 1, 1962, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1962, pp. 7, 16, cat. no. 2, Pl. 2, NC228 U6 (YCBA) Copy 2 is on Mellon Shelf [YCBA]

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, p. 245, no. 10, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

British Drawings and Water-Colours in an American Collection-, Illustrated London News, vol.240,no. 6403, April 21, 1962, p. 627, Available Online: Illus.London News Hist. Archive [ORBIS]

Painting in England 1700-1850 : collection of Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon : Exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, , 1,2, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, 1963, v. 1: p. 203, no. 389, ND466 V57 v.1-2 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 2, no. 10, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Yale University Art Gallery, English drawings and watercolors, from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, April 15 - June 20, 1965 , New Haven, 1965, cat. no. 3, Pl. III, NC228 Y34 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Mahonri Sharp Young, The Mellon Drawings at the Morgan, Apollo, vo. 95, no. 122, April, 1972, pp. 330, 331, fig. 2, N1 A54 + (YCBA) Another copy available in Vertical File - V 2330 [YCBA]

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