1619
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Landscape with Hunters is a 1619 oil by Paul Bril, a Baroque work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
You see a forest clearing at dusk: hunters in red jackets, dogs, and a ruined temple half-hidden by trees. Bril painted this in Rome, but the trees feel like his Flemish homeland. He mixed Italian light with Northern detail—notice how the leaves cast shadows on the temple stones. Look up *chiaroscuro* to see how artists used light and dark like this.
Paul Bril was one of the most prominent and financially successful Northern European landscape painters in Rome between 1590 and 1626. Here he incorporated the classical architecture, rolling hills, and vast expanses of sky found in earlier Italian landscapes into the forest views typical of Flanders in the late 1500s. Such classically inflected landscapes would become popular with collectors of Flemish art across Europe by the mid-17th century.
By descent in the Strohmeyer family from the 1920s; sold Auktionshaus Udo Geble, Radolfzell, Germany, July 10, 2010, no. 351; bought by Matthiesen, London; sold to the Art Institute, 2011.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Paul Bril was a Flemish painter and printmaker principally known for his landscapes. He spent most of his active career in Rome. His Italianate landscapes had a major influence on landscape painting in Italy and Northern Europe.
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