A study of a horse, an ox, dogs, a boar, stags, a goat and foxes

Jan Fyt, one of the leading Antwerp animal painters of the seventeenth century, used this rapidly worked study as source material for several of his finished paintings and etchings. The lunging white dog at lower center, for example, reappears with brown markings in several paintings, including at left in Fyt's Landscape with a hunter and dogs (sold, Dorotheum, Vienna, 26 September 2017, lot 141), and in reverse in the artist's etching of two dogs (Hollstein 12). Similarly, the gray horse at right appears to have served as the model for Fyt's etching of a horse (Hollstein 3). Fyt's prints are typically dated to the 1640s, and it would seem likely that this study was executed around the same time.
We are grateful to Dr. Fred Meijer for proposing the attribution on the basis of photographs.