CIRCLE OF CAREL VAN FALENS (ANTWERP 1683-1733 PARIS)

CIRCLE OF CAREL VAN FALENS (ANTWERP 1683-1733 PARIS)
An Elegant Hawking Party, before riding out
oil on canvas
50 x 59 cm

The style and overall type of the painting point to its execution during the early-mid 18th century. The work can be compared closely on stylistic and compositional grounds to treatments of the subject by Philips Wouverman and most notably an attribution to circle of Carel van Falens can been proposed, the present work showing a comparable treatment of light and a similar characterisation of the figures and horses.

The artist enjoyed great success in his day. Born in Antwerp, he settled in Paris in the early years of the eighteenth century, where he adapted the artistic idiom of Philips Wouverman in such scenes as the present work, imbuing them with a delicacy and elegance of palette more suited to the taste of Régence France. Van Falens began his artistic career in Antwerp, where he trained under the Flemish painter Jan Baptist Huysmans. He later moved to Paris, where he became a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1715. A protégé of the House of Orleans, he was in 1729 appointed Peinte Ordinaire du Roi at the court of King Louis XV.