Object data
oil on panel
support: height 35.7 cm × width 28.6 cm
outer size: depth 3.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Pauwels van Hillegaert
Prince Frederik Hendrik on Horseback
c. 1629 - c. 1635
Technical notes
The support consists of a single oak plank with a vertical grain bevelled on all sides except the top. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1605. The panel could have been ready for use by 1616, but a date in or after 1622 is more likely. The ground layer, visible at the edges, is whitish. The painting was smoothly executed, with visible brushmarks in the sky and landscape. Highlights define the modelling of the horse. The contours of the horse seem to have been reduced on the left and right.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 10 August 2004
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 23 May 2005
Condition
Fair. There is some cleavage around the head of the horse. The painting is abraded and has discoloured areas of retouching, particularly in the sky, while the varnish has yellowed.
Conservation
- W.A. Hopman, 1872: varnish regenerated and revarnished
- W.A. Hopman, 1874: varnish regenerated
Provenance
...; sale, M.C. van Hall (†), Amsterdam (C.S. Roos), 27 April 1858 sqq, no. 105, as A. Palamedesz, fl. 80, to the museum;1 on loan to the Rijksmuseum Muiderslot, Muiden, from an unknown date until 1980
Object number: SK-A-394
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
This equestrian portrait of Frederik Hendrik entered the museum in 1858 as a work by Anthonie Palamedesz, but was soon reassigned to Van Hillegaert.4 The vertical composition with the rider prominent in the foreground on the dark crest of a hill, and a background with a low horizon, ties in with many of the artist’s other equestrian portraits (see, for example, SK-A-3125 and SK-A-4112). The execution, too, is typical of Van Hillegaert, particularly the way in which the modelling of the horse is defined, the background in green tints, and the schematic rendering of the soldiers’ lances. It is assumed that the city in the background is ’s-Hertogenbosch, with the St Janskerk vaguely visible between the horse’s rear legs. The painting can thus be dated in or a few years after the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch in 1629, which is not contradicted by the dendrochronological results.5
Another version, which is identical in its dimensions, composition and execution, is in a private collection.6 The latter work was auctioned in 1974 as the companion piece of an equestrian portrait of King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden.7 It is doubtful, though, that they really were pendants, since the background figures differ too much in scale. It is more likely that the version of the present painting formed a pair with an equestrian portrait of Prince Maurits, both of which were sold together in 1967.8 The figures in both works have the same proportions, while the horses face each other in similar poses. This makes it likely that the Rijksmuseum portrait also originally had a pendant in the form of a painting of Prince Maurits.
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. 125.
Collection catalogues
1872, pp. 155-56, no. 325 (as Anthonie Palamedesz Stevers); 1880, pp. 297-98, no. 347 (as Anthonie Palamedesz Stevers); 1887, p. 63, no. 501; 1903, p. 127, no. 1179; 1934, p. 130, no. 1179; 1976, p. 275, no. A 394; 2007, no. 125
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Pauwels van Hillegaert, Prince Frederik Hendrik on Horseback, c. 1629 - c. 1635', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8684
(accessed 10 November 2024 22:19:23).