(Hamburg 1625–1685 Leuven)
Two riders and a huntsman with dogs and his kill in a landscape,
signed and dated lower left: Jacob(.) fec 1647,
oil on canvas, 132 x 160 cm, framed

Juriaen Jacobsz was born in 1624 to Philipp Jacobsz in Hamburg. According to Houbraken, he was apprenticed to Frans Snyders in Antwerp. Given the stylistic similarities of their work this appears highly plausible. However, recent research assumes that he received his training as a painter in Hamburg and only entered Snyders’s studio towards the mid-1650s. In 1653 Juriaen is recorded to have been in Hamburg, where his daughter Cecilie was baptized. The art dealer Machiel Daby of Ghent, who after Juriaen’s move to Amsterdam in 1658 became one of his most important patrons, is documented to have been her godfather. In the 1660s the artist settled in Leuven, where he worked for the court of Prince Henry Casimir II of Nassau-Dietz, Stadtholder of Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe.

Unlike so many other painters of his day, Jacobsz did not specialise in a single genre, but painted landscapes, animal dramas, still lifes, and portraits. His focus was nevertheless on hunting and animal scenes, which betray Frans Snyders’s influence. Most of his large hunting compositions date from the years between 1659 and 1679, although examples marked by a calm and idyllic atmosphere from an earlier period are known. His earliest work, dating from 1646, depicts idyllic scenery with a company returning from the hunt (Musée de Chambéry, inv. 339/44, dated 1646); another early work of this subject matter from 1652 shows the rest of huntsmen (Hamburger Kunsthalle, inv. no. 149). The present painting, dated 1647, blends in with these early juvenile works and, being the second earliest known painting by Jacobsz, is an important addition to his painted oeuvre.