Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 98.5 cm × width 171.2 cm
outer size: depth 8.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Pauwels van Hillegaert
The Disbanding of the ‘Waardgelders’ (Mercenaries in the Pay of the Town Government) by Prince Maurits on the Neude, Utrecht, 31 July 1618
1627
Inscriptions
- signature and date, bottom centre: Pauwels van hilligaert 1627
- signature, on the house on the left: PAwels van hillig
- date, on the fourth house on the right: Anno 1627
Technical notes
The plain-weave canvas support has been lined and the tacking edges were cut off. Cusping is visible on all sides. The ground layer has a whitish colour. The painting was executed smoothly, with visible brushstrokes in the sky, the ground and some of the buildings. Small hatchings define the modelling of the horses.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 10 August 2004
Conservation
- W.A. Hopman, 1875: varnish regenerated
- W.A. Hopman, 1883: canvas lined
- J.A. Hesterman, 1905: canvas relined
- conservator unknown, 1966: restored
Provenance
...; purchased by the museum from the dealer C.S. Roos, 3 April 1801;1
Object number: SK-A-155
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Pauwels van Hillegaert (Amsterdam c. 1596 - Amsterdam 1640)
Pauwels van Hillegaert was born into a southern Netherlandish immigrant family in Amsterdam. This was around 1596, for in a document of 1620 he is said to be 24 years old. The name of his teacher is not known. He married Anneken Hoomis of Antwerp in 1620 in Amsterdam. In 1639 he was a member of the Amsterdam civic guard, and appears as such in a militia piece by Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy.2 He was buried in Amsterdam on 10 February 1640.
Van Hillegaert is usually referred to as a ‘battle painter’ in the archives. Today he is better known for siege scenes with princes Maurits and Frederik Hendrik and for equestrian portraits of them than for cavalry battles. He often made several versions of his paintings, and probably worked mainly for the open market and less often on commission for the House of Orange or official bodies. His earliest known work dates from 1619. He may have supplied the figures in a landscape by Alexander Keirincx. His work is closely related to that of Henri Ambrosius Pacx.
His two sons, Francois I (1621-60) and Paulus II (1631-58), became painters too, and were probably his pupils and followers. After their father’s death Francois inherited ‘all his father’s painting implements, likewise the drawings by the same together with all the unfinished paintings’.3
Yvette Bruijnen, 2007
References
Bredius III, 1917, pp. 828-29; Hofstede de Groot in Thieme/Becker XVII, 1924, pp. 93-94; Briels 1997, p. 337; Van Maarseveen 1998a, pp. 83, 86, 103
Entry
Pauwels van Hillegart depicted two of Prince Maurits’s feats of arms: his victory at the Battle of Nieuwpoort in 1600 (SK-A-664) and this disbanding of the waardgelders in Utrecht in 1618.4 Van Hillegaert made the painting nine years after the event, but he painted at least three other versions, the earliest in 1622.5 There is a signed but undated version in Utrecht,6 and another dated 1623.7 All are roughly the same size as the one in the Rijksmuseum and show an identical view of the city. The arrangement of the foreground figures, however, was changed each time, although the focal point is always Prince Maurits, on foot and clad in black, surrounded by his retinue in the centre foreground. Two unsigned and undated smaller variants that are close to Van Hillegaert’s versions show the same view of the city but have more figures, which are also more static.8
The subject was probably first painted by the Utrecht artist Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot, who made his first version in 1618 (SK-A-606), the year in which the event took place, and may have been an eye-witness.
Yvette Bruijnen, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 123.
Literature
Van der Sloot 1959, p. 119; Van Maarseveen 1998a, pp. 75-76
Collection catalogues
1809, p. 33, no. 129; 1843, p. 29, no. 125 (‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 13, no. 117 (fl. 400); 1858, p. 62, no. 125; 1880, pp. 140-41, no. 137; 1887, p. 63, no. 498; 1903, p. 127, no. 1177; 1934, p. 129, no. 1177; 1960, p. 134, no. 1177; 1976, p. 275, no. A 155; 2007, no. 123
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Pauwels van Hillegaert, The Disbanding of the ‘Waardgelders’ (Mercenaries in the Pay of the Town Government) by Prince Maurits on the Neude, Utrecht, 31 July 1618, 1627', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6685
(accessed 13 November 2024 07:11:51).