Young Hare

Albrecht Dürer’s Young Hare looks as though it has settled down only for a moment. Its body is gathered into a compact mound, its forepaws rest together, and its long ears rise above a head turned towards us. The animal is still, but the eyes and ears keep that stillness alert. Nothing in the surrounding space tells us what has caught its attention. Dürer gives us the concentrated presence of the hare without supplying a story to explain it. ^{[1] [2]}

Dated 1502, the sheet belongs to the ALBERTINA in Vienna. Catalogued as Feldhase , it measures 25.1 × 22.6 centimetres and combines watercolour and opaque colour, heightened with white, on paper. ^{[3] [4]}

Its small scale makes the minute decisions especially rewarding at close range. Across the body, individual touches build a coat; beside the paws, a few dark marks establish claws. Below them, the date and AD monogram occupy their own clear patch of paper.

The apparent simplicity is part of its attraction. There is no landscape to identify, no human figure to set the scale and no neighbouring animal to prompt a comparison. Yet the empty ground makes every change of texture more noticeable. A few long whiskers can travel unhindered across it; the shadow has room to spread. The hare occupies the sheet so convincingly that the unpainted space begins to feel like somewhere it could sit.

A body held in readiness

Look first at the relationship between the head and the rounded hindquarters. The broad body extends towards the left, while the face turns into a much more direct encounter with the viewer. The nearer eye is fully visible; the other appears as a narrow dark sliver at the far side of the head. This unequal view keeps the face from becoming a symmetrical emblem. We meet an animal at a particular angle, with one cheek, one eye and one side of the muzzle much more available to inspection.

The ears carry that asymmetry upwards. One leans diagonally to the left, opening its pale inner surface; the other stands more upright and presents a darker, narrower face. Their different angles make the space between them feel active. The long shapes also counterbalance the weight of the body below. Without them, the hare would be almost a low oval; with them, it occupies the upper part of the sheet and acquires its unmistakable silhouette.

At the bottom, the forepaws offer a different kind of precision. They extend from the mass of the chest and end in dark, pointed claws. Their small overlapping forms help establish the animal’s weight against the ground. Fur can seem almost weightless where it lifts around the outline, but the paws and the dark contact shadow make the body feel supported. Dürer moves between these sensations without breaking the animal into separate displays of technique.

It is tempting to turn the raised ears into a complete incident: a sound in the room, a person approaching, a hare about to flee. The image leaves all of those events unstated. What it does supply is a convincing balance between rest and responsiveness. Even the long whiskers contribute. They spring beyond the muzzle in curves of different lengths, extending the animal’s reach into the blank space and giving the face a delicate, outward energy.

That quiet intensity has a useful counterpart in Dürer’s more crowded images. The racing figures of his Apocalypse , published in 1498, concentrate attention through collision and movement. Here attention gathers around a single resting creature. The economy of the subject lets us discover how much movement a brushstroke, an ear or a whisker can suggest within a motionless image. ^[18]

Looking into the coat

The hare is brown only in the broadest sense. Across its back, warm ochres, dark browns and greyish passages mingle beneath pale curling strokes. The breast and cheek grow lighter; the tips and interiors of the ears deepen towards black. A cool dark patch rounds the lower flank, while a warmer band connects the head with the shoulders. These changes make the coat readable as a surface turning through light, with different kinds of hair covering different parts of the body.

On the back, small arcs overlap like loose waves. They change direction as they cross the rounded form, helping us feel its volume before we consciously follow any individual hair. Near the shoulder the marks gather into denser, darker clusters. Around the cheek they become shorter and more numerous, turning around the eye and running towards the muzzle. On the breast, longer pale strokes descend towards the paws. The direction of the brushwork is doing as much as the colour to describe the body.

The edges are equally varied. Along the back, stray hairs lift away from the larger contour, interrupting its smoothness. At the lower flank, pale tufts stand against a darker interior. Around the face, fine dark and light strokes merge into an extraordinarily close weave. The animal never needs a single heavy outline to keep it together. Its boundary repeatedly dissolves into hairs and returns as a firm silhouette.

Enlargement reveals how selective this precision is. The pale strokes are visible marks, sometimes hooked, sometimes almost straight, sometimes laid across darker marks that remain legible beneath them. They do not all have identical lengths or spacing. A mechanical repetition would flatten the coat into a pattern. Dürer varies the pattern as he moves across the animal, so that a seemingly exhaustive account of fur remains responsive to the larger shape.

The whiskers make a particularly clear comparison with these short touches. Some cross the cheek and project far beyond the face; others rise above the nearer eye. Their long curves give the brushwork a different rhythm. Against the busy coat, they read immediately as a distinct type of hair. The black nose, the small shadowed mouth and the dark tips of the claws add a few concentrated accents where the texture changes again.

The result invites a tactile response. We imagine the resistance of the short hair on the face and the softer, longer coat around the chest. That imagined touch grows from differences we can actually see: short strokes close to the muzzle, longer wavering ones along the breast, and a ragged fringe below the left flank. The animal’s surface changes from place to place, even while the brown and white marks keep it recognisable as one continuous coat.

Light, shadow and the window in the eye

Follow the pale strands across the back and then look to the grey brushwork beside the paws. The strongest shadow gathers beneath the chest and runs out towards the right edge. Its strokes become broader and more exposed as they leave the body. Along the lower right boundary of the animal, light hairs interrupt the meeting of dark fur and grey shadow. These small interruptions prevent the outline from looking cut out.

The nearer eye changes the scale of attention. Two pale vertical shapes occupy its almost black centre, with a dark division between them. They look like a reflected window. A brown rim surrounds the dark area, and a tiny warm spot touches the upper lid. Around that smooth surface, the hairs turn in short, irregular dashes. The eye looks glossy partly because it offers a quiet, dark interval within so much broken brushwork.

Try covering the reflection for a moment. The brown rim still describes the eye’s rounded shape, but the pale accents supply an especially quick impression of light caught on moisture. Their clean shapes differ from the hooks and flicks of the coat. Dürer makes that contrast do considerable work within an area smaller than the nearby whiskers.

The reflection cannot tell us how long the animal was observed or what stood before Dürer at every stage. A painter can study, remember, construct or repeat a reflection. The detail helps produce the experience of a living eye; it does not by itself document a continuous sitting by a live hare. Its power lies in how persuasively it completes the animal we see.

Watercolour, opaque colour and white

The distinction between transparent and covering colour helps explain what we see. A transparent passage lets the support contribute to the lightness of a colour; an opaque stroke can place a pale mark over a darker area. Look at the breast, where long light hairs cross warm brown, and the back, where pale curls remain individually readable within the darker coat. The colour describes a substantial body while the separate marks keep its surface open to inspection.

White heightening means adding white to establish highlights or lighter details. Here the light hairs are especially striking because they can pass across brown and grey passages, binding separate areas of colour into a continuous coat. Their brilliance is relative. Against a dark shoulder a small pale curl can appear very bright; against the lighter breast similar marks become part of a softer transition. The same kind of touch can serve a different purpose as the colour beneath it changes.

The sheet rewards two distances of viewing. From farther away, the scattered strokes resolve into a rounded, furry animal. Close up, their direction, pressure and overlap become subjects in themselves. At the eye and muzzle, very small differences establish hard, moist or hairy surfaces. At the cast shadow, broader strokes do the comparatively open work of placing the whole creature in light.

The ALBERTINA records traces of a preliminary drawing at the right ear. This establishes an earlier drawn stage, although the finished surface cannot reveal the exact order of every subsequent touch. ^[3]

The date and monogram make a different kind of mark. Set below the forepaws, with clear space around them, they belong visibly to the paper on which the illusion is made. Their placement allows the hare to remain self-contained while the artist’s identity and the year sit immediately beneath it. Their presence leaves open the separate question of why Dürer chose to finish this particular subject so fully.

How might Dürer have worked?

The liveliness of the hare has encouraged an understandable question: was there a living animal in the studio? Close observation of animals clearly belongs to Dürer’s achievement, but the finished sheet does not preserve a record of its own making. Observation of a live hare, work from a dead or preserved specimen, and the assembly of information gathered at different moments remain possibilities. The image alone cannot establish which combination he used.

Different parts would have presented different practical demands. A mass of fur and the shape of an ear could be examined at length in a still specimen; the alert relationship of eyes, ears and head could draw on experience of living animals. These possibilities help us understand the problem facing the artist. The sheet itself offers no account of which passages were made under which conditions.

His later writing offers a useful context, provided it is kept separate from the history of this individual work. In an extract from the third book of his writing on human proportion, translated by William Martin Conway in 1889, Dürer insists that artistic understanding comes from nature. He then explains that sustained study gives an experienced artist a store from which to invent forms, so that each particular figure need not always be copied directly from life. The argument joins observation to accumulated knowledge and artistic judgement. ^[19]

That distinction helps us look at the hare without demanding a single miraculous encounter. The sheet’s coherence could involve many acts of looking, decisions about lighting and the organisation of marks into a convincing whole. Its astonishing detail gives access to the finished result; it does not remove the choices and constructions through which the result was achieved.

A nature study made to be seen

The word “study” can make this sheet sound like a rehearsal awaiting a larger task. Its finish invites a broader understanding. In her 2013 National Gallery of Art exhibition brochure, Margaret Doyle notes that Dürer’s nature drawings and watercolours were not necessarily intended for use in other compositions. She also describes their early recognition as works that other artists would copy and vary. ^[20]

Christof Metzger developed a more specific interpretation in the ALBERTINA’s 2019 exhibition. He presented major nature sheets, including the hare and The Great Piece of Turf , as autonomous demonstrations of Dürer’s skill, kept in the workshop to show visitors his command of drawing, colour and nature. ^[18]

Looking moves from the fur’s varied marks to the reflection, from the reflection to the whiskers, and from the whiskers to the broad shadow. The date and monogram below the paws give this inspection a natural point of arrival. Each element can be examined separately, yet all take their place within an animal whose body is immediately legible. The image keeps both scales of attention available.

Metzger’s proposed workshop function remains an interpretation; the inscription does not document a commission, customer or particular visit.

From Nuremberg to the imperial collection

The hare’s later life becomes tangible in the Imhoff family’s correspondence. In a letter dated 30 December 1588, published by Johann Carl Sigmund Kiefhaber in 1803, Willibald Imhoff’s widow Anna answered Rudolf II’s request to see works from the collection her husband had assembled. She explained that he had spent years, money and effort on the collection, treating it as his dearest treasure. His will had required the works to remain with the family; some of his sons had confirmed that obligation by giving their hands. ^[21]

Anna’s letter records a competing demand. She acknowledged the emperor’s wish and reported an agreement to send the works. The Kunstbuch , or art book, had been entrusted to Joachim König, a family friend travelling towards Prague. Since König had lacked room on his own wagon for the panel paintings, these had been packed and handed to a carrier for dispatch that day. The document lets us glimpse a collection moving through practical arrangements: a trusted intermediary, separate packages and transport whose capacity mattered. ^[21]

In the accompanying published lists, the hare receives the very short description “Ein Häslein”: a small hare. It follows a wing on parchment and precedes a lion. Elsewhere the list distinguishes books by their coloured covers, and includes prints alongside drawings. A subject that now fills a page of discussion once needed only two words in the inventory of an album. The surviving wording supplies neither a detailed description of the animal nor its date, dimensions or technique; the identification with today’s Vienna sheet also depends on the subsequent collection history. ^[21]

Hans Hoffmann’s involvement belongs to that wider history. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum’s 2022 exhibition account describes his privileged access to the Imhoff works and his role as an intermediary for Rudolf II; he became the emperor’s court painter in 1585. ^[22]

The ALBERTINA records a move of the Dürer drawings from Prague to Vienna in 1631, their transfer from the imperial treasury to the Court Library in 1783, and the hare’s acquisition by Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen in 1796. ^[3]

The exchange that brought drawings from the library to Albert was already described by Joseph Heller in 1827. He reported that prints had been given in return, then praised the new mounting of the drawings on carefully chosen backing sheets, crediting the inspector Franz Lefevre. Heller also commended Lefevre’s welcome to local and visiting viewers. The account connects a change of ownership with ways of preserving, arranging and encountering the sheets. It is testimony from the early nineteenth century, rather than a modern conservation report on the hare. ^[4]

That distinction matters because these early publications contain questions and errors alongside valuable documents. Kiefhaber’s opening note supposed the Imhoff negotiations had failed, even though he printed Anna’s dispatch letter. Heller wondered which of two closely related hares, one in Vienna and one in Dresden, was the original. Neither uncertainty overturns the present identification of the 1502 Vienna sheet. They show how much later understanding depended on bringing dispersed objects and surviving records together. ^{[21] [4]}

Hoffmann and the multiplication of hares

The original’s movement is only one part of its history. As the Germanisches Nationalmuseum explains, Hoffmann supplied both close imitations and independent variations for collectors during the enthusiasm for Dürer around 1600. His works could carry his own initials or Dürer’s monogram. ^[22]

One acknowledged imitation was described by Heller in the Vienna collection of Joseph Grünling. Heller called the seated hare on parchment an excellent copy after Dürer and recorded Hoffmann’s monogram with the date 1582. An admired copy could therefore be identified as a later artist’s work, with its precision valued in its own right. ^[4]

For a more expansive transformation, consider Hoffmann’s A Hare in the Forest , about 1585, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum. This is an oil painting on panel. The Getty identifies Dürer’s hare as its model and explains that Hoffmann combined separate nature studies into an invented setting. The animal nibbles a leaf among elaborately described plants and small creatures. The museum also records Hoffmann’s assistance in securing Dürer’s watercolour for Rudolf II. ^[23]

In Hoffmann’s picture, the animal still provides the central warm mound, but it shares the surrounding space with stems, flowers, trees and patches of light. The scene extends beyond its body in every direction. Returning to Dürer’s sheet makes its economy striking: the whiskers have open paper to cross, and the cast shadow is almost the only form outside the animal. Hoffmann’s landscape makes a subject of the setting that Dürer leaves us to imagine.

A frontal hare in Berlin offers another response. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum’s 2022 caption dates this work by Hoffmann to 1580–85. Its image nevertheless bears 1528 and an AD monogram below the animal. Seen beside Dürer’s 1502 hare, it presents a more direct, downward view of the face: both eyes are conspicuous, the nose approaches the centre, and the tall ears open out above the head. The change of angle reorganises the creature’s whole silhouette. The early-looking inscription belongs to this later object and cannot serve as its execution date. ^[22]

These examples make “copy” a starting point for questions. A close version can preserve a famous arrangement; a changed viewpoint can explore the same creature; an elaborate environment can turn an isolated motif into a new picture. Signatures and dates also demand comparison with the work itself and its recorded history. The 1502 original in Vienna remains distinct from the many later hares through which its image travelled.

The hare beside turf and feathers

Two other nature sheets sharpen our sense of Dürer’s choices. The Great Piece of Turf is dated 1503, the year after the hare. Its viewpoint brings us down among stems and leaves, with overlapping vegetation forming a dense interior. The ALBERTINA interprets the apparent roadside fragment as a composition probably assembled in the workshop from separately studied plants. Both sheets make close observation compelling through an organised whole; they ask us to experience very different positions in relation to their subjects. ^[12]

The turf surrounds an imagined small observer, whereas the hare is presented as a complete creature against open ground. The hare’s rounded coat can be grasped at once before the eye moves into its detail. In the plants, recognition unfolds through successive overlaps. These are deliberate ways of making nature available to sight, with viewpoint and arrangement guiding the pleasure of discovery.

The Wing of a Blue Roller , currently dated around 1500, concentrates on a different surface again. Broad overlapping feathers and fine down replace the hare’s fur; brilliant blue and green replace its restrained earth colours. The roller sheet is painted on finely prepared parchment, and the museum identifies the red area at the severed end as a wound. Its inscribed 1512 date was added later and is not accepted as the execution date in the current record. ^[25]

That explicit evidence of a dead specimen makes a valuable distinction. Dürer’s scrutiny could invest a severed wing with visual richness, just as the hare can seem alive through its gathered posture and shining eye. The vitality of the finished image is an achievement in representation. It remains possible to marvel at it without pretending that every circumstance of the model is known.