Flemish Early 17th Century Old Master Oil on Panel Painting Hunting Scene by Peter Van Lint, 1620

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A highly important Flemish Old Master oil painting by Peter Van Lint (1609-1690), titled "Preparing for the Hunt", the painting … Read more A highly important Flemish Old Master oil painting by Peter Van Lint (1609-1690), titled "Preparing for the Hunt", the painting is dated & signed by the artist, 1620. The painting was authenticated in the 1880s by the American artist & Old Master expert, Joseph Foxcroft Cole (1837-1892).

Van Lint was a highly celebrated long lived & prolific artist, he was a contemporary of other famous Baroque artists such as Peter Paul Reubens. This very fine painting depicts a scene of people readying for the hunt, to the foreground is a Lord & Lady dressed in their finery with lurchers and other hunting dogs milling around, whilst grooms ready horses for their riders. The figures gather below the church clock tower, to the background are rolling Hills and above the valley are other stone built buildings.
The verso has the artist's name in his own hand and the date of 1620, there also seems to be a title below this, there is also a late 19th century paper label authenticating the painting as a work by Van Lint. The expert was the artist and Old Master's expert Joseph Foxcroft Cole, who was a significant artist in his own right of the American Barbizon School, in the 1880's Foxcroft Cole valued the painting at $500.
The painting is housed in a period gilded frame, condition is very good indeed, the painting will be accompanied with a certificate of authenticity, the painting came from a considerable private collection of fine 17th and 18th century Old Masters. The painting is accompanied with a Certificate of Authenticy.
Painting at sight without frame 18" x 14"

Pieter van Lint or Peter van Lint (1609–1690) was a talented Flemish Old Master painter, draftsman & designer of tapestries. He excelled in history paintings, genre scenes & portraits in the Flemish Baroque style with some influence of late Renaissance Classicism. He worked in Antwerp & Italy.
He was born in Antwerp where he trained under Artus Wolffort. During his training he frequently visited Antwerp's churches to copy the paintings of his contemporaries such as Peter Paul Rubens as well as those of earlier generations such as Marten de Vos and the Francken brothers.
Van Lint become a master in the Guild of Saint Luke in 1633. In that same year he traveled to Rome where he remained until 1640. In Rome he worked for Cardinal Domenico Ginnasi, Bishop of Ostia, who employed him to decorate the local cathedral. Van Lint also frescoed the Cybo family chapel in the Santa Maria del Popolo with the Legend of the True Cross in 1636–40. In addition to religious commissions, the artist painted numerous small genre scenes in the style of the Bamboccianti; a group of Roman genre painters in the first quarter of the 1600s. He spent time in Paris from 1640 to 1641 where he possibly was in contact with Poussin.
The year after his return to Antwerp in 1642 he married Elisabeth Willemyns, the couple had seven children. When he became widowed in 1679, the artist remarried the following year to Anna Moeren (Moren or Morren).
His pupils included Caerel de las Cuevas, Jan-Baptista Ferrari and Godfried Maes. His son Hendrik Frans van Lint from his second marriage was a celebrated landscape painter in Rome.
His earliest works follow his master Wolffort's style, which was itself indebted to the academic manner of Otto van Veen. During his stay in Rome he made many studies after the antique and developed an interest in classicism, which remained a constant characteristic of his style. At the same time, he tried his hand at the Bamboccianti genre style of painting.
Many of his later works were religious paintings, such as the Marriage of the Virgin (1640) in Antwerp Cathedral, which were in the classicizing style of Wollfort and his Roman examples. Besides larger paintings, he made small-scale devotional paintings, which found a large market in Spain & the Spanish colonies in America. He often completed assignments for leading Antwerp art dealers such as Matthijs Musson and Guillam Forchondt.
In response to the contemporary demand for copies of Rubens' oil sketches, van Lint produced a large number of copies of Rubens' work. Pieter van Lint was together with Abraham Willemsens and Willem van Herp one of the principal producers of such copies for the Antwerp art dealers. Many of these were executed on copper, a material for painting that was highly prized both for durability and its glossy finish in Spain. Four oils on copper works by van Lint are in the collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid, including a copy after Rubens.
An album with travel sketches, including two sketches which are signed 'P.V.L.' in the collection of the Martin von Wagner Museum in Würzburg, which were formerly attributed to Pieter van Laer (the central figure of the Bamboccianti) has now been re-attributed to Pieter van Lint. The album contains sketches, which the artist made of scenes, including of his fellow travelers, during his travels in Italy around 1636. The drawings give a lively idea of the conditions and the manner in which travelers undertook their travels at the time.
Pieter van Lint was also active as a designer of tapestries. Correspondence between the Antwerp trader Hendrik Lenaerts and the Brussels weavers Jan van Leefdael and Gerard van der Strecken dated 1660 shows that van Lint had designed 8 cartoons for a Story of Domitian. A tapestry series dated 1639 on the Story of the Virgin Mary still preserved in the Pottery convent in Bruges is believed to have been made after models by Pieter van Lint. The artist died in Antwerp in 1690. See less