Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

Flemish School c.1700
The World Reversed or The Hares' Revenge
Oil on canvas
166.2 x 211cm; 65½ x 83in

Provenance:
The Eyre Family, Newhouse, Redlynch, Salisbury, by 1871, and by repute earlier commissioned by them;
And by family descent

Literature:
John Gough Nichols, The Herald and Genealogist, vol.6 (London, 1871), p.460;
Country Life, 31 July 1926, p.179;
Arthur Foss and Rosemary Joekes, Country House Treasures of Britain (National Trust, 1980), p.245

This extraordinary painting is part of a tradition of pictures, showing animals taking revenge on hunters and their dogs, that dates to the early seventeenth century. An anonymous engraving published by Theodoor Galle in 1604 is entitled Wild animals taking their revenge on hunters and hunting-dogs. The earliest depiction of hares alone turning the tables on man is in a ceiling fresco in the villa of Bucovice in Moravia, in a chamber known as the zajeci sal (Hall of Hares). Dating from c.1637, this fresco perhaps reflects the tumultuous world of Central Europe during the Thirty Years War. It may be that it had a source in a print also available to later painters of this subject, since like the present picture, the much earlier fresco also includes a huntsman being tossed in a blanket.

Two further variants of this work are known, one previously at Hampton Court Leominster, and the other at Tetton House, Taunton. For all its recorded history, our painting has belonged to the Eyre (later Eyre-Matcham) family and hung at Newhouse, Wiltshire, known for its links to Nelson and for being one of only two ‘trinity’ houses in Britain. A letter to Country Life in 1927 suggested that the painting was painted for the family as a pun on their name, which was originally Le Heyr, but in any case the painting was certainly in situ, and attracting comment from visitors, by the mid-nineteenth century. Various attributions have been suggested, including Van Kessel and Ridinger, and dates ranging from 1640 to 1715.