Landscape with Falconers 1612 - 1645

Mattheus Adolfsz Molanus painted this oil on copper work, Landscape with Falconers, sometime in the early 17th century. The painting depicts an aristocratic hunting party complete with horses, dogs, and falcons against a panoramic landscape of castles and quaint villages. Falconry was an expensive and highly specialized skill, and so its appearance here marks this out as a scene of aristocratic leisure. Made in the Netherlands, this little painting encapsulates the self-image of the Dutch landed gentry, for whom hunting was not a necessity, but a performance of status. It’s as if this elite social class wished to proclaim dominion over the land through a show of country pursuits. To understand the work more fully, one could investigate the status of falconry in the Netherlands at this time. We can appreciate how the painting’s meaning is tied to the society that produced it.