AKEN, Joseph van
(b. ca. 1699, Antwerpen, d. 1749, London)

A Sporting Conversation Piece

c. 1730
Oil on canvas, 58 x 71 cm
Private collection

In this sporting conversation piece two gentlemen with their guns and dogs rest at the edge of a wood; a third approaches them whilst a fourth, gun in hand, walks into the wood. The artist executed a number of sporting conversations of the present type which depict the Rural Squire enjoying his sport in the company of his friends. The figures are rather elongated in a slightly mannerist way and adopt curiously "elegant" poses.