around 1596 -1678 · Antwerp and Flemish animal painting

Launched packs, monumental animals and baroque tension make Paul de Vos one of the great Flemish specialists in hunting and the animal world.

Paul de Vos was born around 1596 and died in Antwerp in 1678. Brother of the painters Cornelis and Jan de Vos, he trained with David Remeeus and became a master around 1620. His apprenticeship also took place in the orbit of Frans Snyders, his brother-in-law, whose large formats, animal still lifes and hunts intended for palaces he took up. Paul de Vos, however, asserts his own way: warmer and paler colors, freer touch, less sharp contours and a pronounced taste for dramatic tension. Dogs, wolves, deer and wild animals clash in compositions crossed by diagonals. Rubens, however, appreciates his talent enough to entrust him with the animals of several paintings and own eight of his works. Orders also flow from Spain, where his hunts decorate the collections of Philip IV and the nobility. The Entry of Animals into Noah's Ark and The Terrestrial Paradise, painted around 1650, transform the biblical subject into a vast living inventory. Couples of species, birds, wild animals and domestic animals occupy the foreground while human history stands in the background. Abundance remains readable thanks to the rhythm of the groups, the looks and the crossed movements. The "Paul de Vos" selection notably compares The Entry of Animals into Noah's Ark and The Terrestrial Paradise. His reading favors drawing.

Paul de Vos paints the animal as a baroque force: muscles, coat and gazes set the entire canvas in motion.