The action of a great violence involves ferocious beasts, together or confronted with hunters on horseback. His bestiary is too varied to be relying from personal Javanese memories : lions, tigers, deer, buffalo, boar.
The composition seems directly inspired by the hunting scenes painted by Rubens around 1620, with a swirling and vividly colored center in which the protagonists are intertwined up to the limit of readability. Men and animals express exacerbated feelings of panic and horror.
When he is in France, Raden Saleh is in touch with Horace Vernet but his more flexible lines are inspired by the Dutch landscape learned from Schelfhout. The similarity of his ardor with Delacroix's romantic orientalism is obvious, but the hunts by Raden Saleh were conceived long before the 1854 commission to Delacroix by the Beaux-Arts for a lion hunt.
Raden Saleh returned to Java in 1852, bringing with him the notoriety he acquired in Europe. Like Rubens, he is using very large formats. Like what tradition said of Rubens, he also likes to include his self-portrait in full activity among the hunters.
An oil on canvas 110 x 180 cm dated 1855 titled La Chasse au taureau sauvage Banteng (Banteng wild bull hunting) has just surfaced in Brittany, in a basement where the owners had hidden it for several decades because they were uncomfortable with its violence. Minor misses are reported. It is estimated € 150K for sale by Ruellan in Vannes on January 27, lot 1. Please watch the video shared by Interencheres.
SOLD for € 7.2M before fees
Retrouvez nous le 27 janvier 2018 pour la vente à Vannes de « La Chasse au taureau sauvage » de Raden Saleh datée et signée de 1855. #artist #Inde #chasse #Tigre #Taureau #auction #SaveTheDate https://t.co/4OqgLXxsMi pic.twitter.com/Eabe5zvVRO
— RUELLAN (@jpruellan) December 13, 2017