Willem van Herp the Elder regularly borrowed compositions from contemporary colleagues from his hometown Antwerp, such as Rubens, van Dyck or Jordaens.

The composition of our mythological subject goes back to a then popular, but now lost original by Rubens from 1639.

 

 

Flemish painter

Circa 1613/14 Antwerp – 1677 Antwerp

 

Also known as Guilliam van Herp I.

 

Painter of genre scenes and of historical (that is biblical and mythological) scenes. 

Van Herp was also active as a staffage painter, incorporating figures in other artist’s paintings. Furthermore, I should mention that van Herp made several tapestry designs.

 

Pupil of two further unknown Antwerp painters: Damiaan Wortelmans in 1625/26 and Hans Biermans I 1628/29. 

Van Herp joined the local Antwerp Painter’s Guild of Saint Luke only a few years later in the year 1637/1638; he must therefore have travelled and worked abroad in his early career.

 

In 1654 he married a daughter of the religious and mythological scenes painter Artus Wolffort (Antwerp 1581 – 1641 Antwerp).

 

 

Our painting shows a mythological hunting party emerging from the forest and plunging across a stream. With their many hounds they have caught up with the deer. At the centre Diana, the Roman goddess of hunting, 

identifiable by the crescent in her hair, is about to spear a doe. Her Greek name was Artemis. One of her companions aims her bow at a stag; another blows a horn. 

This composition copies a lost original by Sir Peter Paul Rubens from 

1639. It is known by a sketch in a Belgian private collection. 

Two other versions by Willem van Herp I sit in French museums, in Gien and in Perpignan. The museum of Brighton holds a version given to Jan Thomas van Yperen. The Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna has an 

anonymous panel painting and a tapestry, both also with the same 

composition.

Our subject can be linked to the Calydonian boar hunt by Atalante and 

Meleager, which van Herp also painted several times.

 

 

Because it is a sublime, grand composition painted on a large, immaculate copper plate.