In 1618, van Dyck was admitted to Antwerp’s Guild of Saint Luke, thus acknowledging him as a master painter. Nevertheless, he stayed on in Rubens’s workshop before travelling to England in 1620. Although based on Rubens’s hunting scenes, this painting exhibits its own independent features with its frieze-like pictorial composition taken from Classical reliefs. The figurative staffage is by Van Dyck; the animals were executed by Frans Snyders who was working on the subject of hunting with hounds at this time. Another version of this painting can be found in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden.