Support The support consists of two vertically grained oak planks (approx. 21 and 35.8 cm), approx. 1.4-0.7 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has a pounced mark of a six-pointed star, assigned to an anonymous panel maker in Antwerp. There are two gouges and a hole (now filled) at the top centre, the latter possibly used for hanging the painting. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1625. The panel could have been ready for use by 1636, but a date in or after 1642 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, solid, brownish-yellow ground extends slightly over the edges of the support. It emits a strong orange-yellow fluorescence in UV light.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was built up from light to dark. The sky consists of a single layer of thick, white, pastose paint with large, blue pigment particles. The clouds were worked in thickly and wet in wet, and the trees were executed on top of the sky. The lower landscape was underpainted in a light grey and covered with compositional elements. Infrared photography and stereomicroscopy revealed a large alteration in the centre of the composition, in the area of the buzzard and the seized duck. It seems that forms were removed here, together with the (light grey) underpaint and the ground – leaving only remnants of the latter in the interstices of the wood grain –, to make room for the two birds. The bare wood is still visible here and there, for example under the duck’s body and left wing. Other areas were thinned by scraping, perhaps to create the watery patches of the marsh as can be seen, for example, in the area of the plant in the bottom left corner. Stereomicroscopy showed that the duck on the left was built up over a greyish, dark undermodelling. Highlights in the feathers and leaves were added with small, pastose brushstrokes at the end. Vague, dark forms visible in some areas of the water indicate numerous changes, and could not be identified either with the naked eye or with infrared photography.
Gwen Tauber, 2024

Poor. A vertical crack runs across the entire height of the panel at approx. 14.5 cm from the right. The support was once stabilized with a canvas patch, as indicated by glue residues on the reverse, and is now reinforced with four wooden blocks glued to the top and bottom. The tips of the top right and bottom left corners are missing, and there are cracks in the outer side of both planks and along the join. There are numerous pinpoint paint losses throughout and the varnish is very discoloured.

…; ? sale, London (E. Foster), 12 February 1834, no. 56, as Wijntrack (‘A Landscape with Hawk and Ducks’), £1 6s, to Her(r)man;¹¹The seller was ‘D. St.’, according to notes in a copy of the sale catalogue in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; GPI, Br-13940.…; sale, London (Christie’s), 17 June 1912, no. 101, as Wijntrack, £3 13s 6d, to Baron Rudolph Theodorus van Pallandt van Eerde (1868-1913), Huis Eerde, Ambt-Ommen;²²The vendor was A. Bullard, auctioneer, Newport Pagnell; written communication, Julia Delves Broughton, Christie’s, London, 2009. by whom bequeathed to the museum, as Wijntrack, with 9 other paintings and 46 prints, July 1913

Object number: SK-A-2682

Credit line: R.T., Baron van Pallandt van Eerde Bequest

Two domesticated ducks are being attacked by what seems to be a buzzard.⁵⁵Observation by M.D. Haga; note RMA. The bird of prey is identified as a hawk in other publications. One has been caught but the other escapes. The scene is not very realistic, because buzzards mainly eat carrion and small animals and would not choose to go after live waterfowl.⁶⁶With thanks to Harvey van Diek, Sovon, Nijmegen. The poses of the assailant and its victim also look very unnatural. Depictions of this kind, with ducks and swans being seized by birds of prey, are not uncommon in Wijntrack’s oeuvre. He was one of the first practitioners of this subgenre in the Dutch Republic.⁷⁷He was later followed by Abraham Hondius and David de Coninck.

The composition is similar to that of Fox Hunting Ducks dated 1652 in Utrecht, a colossal canvas signed by both Wijntrack and Joris van der Haagen.⁸⁸Centraal Museum; illustrated in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, p. 271. On their collaboration see M.J.F.W. van der Haagen, ‘De samenwerking van Joris van der Haagen en Dirck Wijntrack’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), pp. 43-48. It has also been thought that the latter was responsible for the landscape in the present painting,⁹⁹B.W.F. van Riemsdijk, Catalogue of the Pictures, Miniatures, Pastels, Framed Water Colour Drawings, etc. in the Rijks-Museum at Amsterdam: With 2 Supplements, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1914, p. 548; M.J.F.W. van der Haagen, ‘De samenwerking van Joris van der Haagen en Dirck Wijntrack’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), pp. 43-48, esp. p. 44; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXVI, Leipzig 1947, p. 334. but, although the type is vaguely similar to those by Van der Haagen, the quality is so inferior as to rule out such an attribution.¹⁰¹⁰Jan Karel van der Haagen, a descendant of the artist who believed that the landscape in this painting was by his ancestor, retracted that suggestion in a later publication; see J.K. van der Haagen, De schilders van der Haagen en hun werk: Met catalogus van de schilderijen en teekeningen van Joris van der Haagen, Voorburg 1932, no. 268. However, it is likely that the background is indeed by an artist other than Wijntrack.

The bare strip beneath the left wing of the captured duck suggests that the birds were executed after the landscape. What makes that so interesting is that there is at least one other instance in which the opposite is the case in a joint work by Wijntrack and Van der Haagen.¹¹¹¹Buijsen in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, p. 268. Technical examination of the Rijksmuseum picture has revealed that paint was scraped off down to the bare wood of the panel on the right to create a space for the buzzard and its prey,¹²¹²See Technical notes. but the severely yellowed varnish and the many areas of damage and retouching make it impossible to say for certain at what stage this was done, nor whether the escaping duck was also added after the landscape. It is noteworthy, too, that that bird is far truer to life than the two others, but the differences seem to be too minor to conclude that the latter group is by another hand.

Wijntrack’s scenes of birds and waterfowl are placed between 1643 and 1654. The year of 1652 on the Utrecht Fox Hunting Ducks provides a reference point for this undated work, which would have been made around the same time.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

M.J.F.W. van der Haagen, ‘De samenwerking van Joris van der Haagen en Dirck Wijntrack’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), pp. 43-48, esp. p. 44 (the landscape as by Joris van der Haagen); J.K. van der Haagen, De schilders van der Haagen en hun werk: Met catalogus van de schilderijen en teekeningen van Joris van der Haagen, Voorburg 1932, p. 117, no. 268 (the attribution of the background to Van der Haagen doubted)

1914, p. 548, no. 2739a (the landscape probably by Joris van der Haagen); 1976, p. 618, no. A 2682 (as Wijntrack)

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Dirck Wijntrack and anonymous, A Buzzard Attacking Two Ducks, c. 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026973