The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) has announced that the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden is the recipient of this year’s TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund. With the funding, the Gemäldegalerie will restore The Boar Hunt (1616-18), a monumental painting by Peter Paul Rubens.

This work was most likely acquired directly from the artist in 1627 by George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, before becoming part of the imperial collection in Prague. In 1749, it entered the collection of Frederick Augustus II of Saxony and has remained in Dresden ever since, surviving wartime displacement to the USSR in 1945, a decade in storage in Moscow, and eventual return to Dresden in the mid-1950s.

The Boar Hunt is obscured by a thick, darkened multi-layered varnish (likely nineteenth-century) that mutes Rubens’ original palette. Technical imaging has also confirmed the presence of an upper extension into which the original underdrawing does not continue, raising key questions about when the extension was made and by whom. Early evidence suggests the addition may have been made under Rubens’ direction, while ongoing research will explore possible contributions from artists in his circle, including Jan Wildens, Lucas van Uden, or Anthony van Dyck.

The restoration forms part of a four-year research and exhibition program dedicated to Rubens’ Dresden corpus of nearly 40 works, carried out in collaboration with the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), and the University of Antwerp (AXIS research group).

Following its restoration, this work will be a highlight of the permanent exhibition at the Old Masters Picture Gallery. It will debut in the Rubens in Dresden exhibition (25 June 2027 – 10 January 2028), which marks the 450th anniversary of the painter’s birth.