Dürer’s Hare

Albrecht Dürer-Hare-1502

The genius of the Northern Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer was a master of many mediums, producing ground-breaking woodcuts, etchings, engravings, drypoints, drawings, paintings, self-portraits and, as his magnificent Hare from 1502 demonstrates, watercolours.

Created with a mixture of watercolour and gouache, Hare is a meretricious rendered masterpiece of observational art. The hare is imbued with a vivid sense of realism, indeed personality, suggested by the mottled fur that runs in different directions and the glint in the eye that on a closer look turns out to be a reflection of a window. With his nature studies that echoed the work of the medieval philosopher Albertus Magnus, Dürer pointed the way to empirical science, just one of the many achievements of this truly remarkable artist.