Object data
oil on panel
support: height 47.1 cm × width 63.1 cm
Pauwels van Hillegaert
Prince Frederik Hendrik and Count Ernst Casimir at the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1629
c. 1629 - c. 1635
Technical notes
The oak support consists of two planks with a horizontal grain and is bevelled on all sides. The ground layer is whitish. A pentimento is present beneath the brown horse in the landscape, while the positions of the head of the brown horse and the front legs of the white horse were shifted. The paint was smoothly applied with impasto for the highlights.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 18 November 2004
Condition
Good. There are a few discoloured retouchings, and an old stable crack of approximately 21 cm in the sky on the left.
Conservation
- H.H. Mertens, 1966: complete restoration
Provenance
...; transferred from The Hague to Paleis Het Loo, Apeldoorn, September 1763 (‘Een stuk verbeeldende de belegering van ’s-Hertogenbosch met de portraiten van prins Maurits en prins Frederik Hendrik, beide te paert rijdende, gevolgt door eenige officieren, door [...], in een zwarte lijst met een vergulde binnekant. hoogte 1 v. 6.5 d. Breedte 2 v. 0.5 d. [45 x 57.9 cm]’);1...; first recorded in the museum in January 1800 (‘Fr[ederik] Hendrik belegert den Bosch door Palamedes’);2 on loan to the Oranje-Nassau Museum, The Hague, 1926-32; on loan to the Rijksmuseum Muiderslot, Muiden, 1947-80; on loan to the Noord Brabants Museum,’s-Hertogenbosch, since 1987
Object number: SK-A-607
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.3 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’.4
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, seen on the right with his commander’s baton, and Ernst Casimir at the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch, entered the museum as a work by Palamedesz.5 The attribution to Van Hillegaert in the collection catalogue of 1887 has never been questioned since. The execution is of a piece with that of the securely attributed works, particularly as regards the distinctive modelling of the horses, the green shades of the background and the schematic lances of the soldiers. A date in or a few years after 1629, the year of the siege, is plausible.
The placement of the horsemen on the dark crest of a hill in the foreground is typical of Van Hillegaert, with the siege of the city stretching out behind them against a low horizon.6 In contrast to Van Hillegaert’s single-figured equestrian portraits, the commanders are gesturing to direct the viewer’s attention towards their victory in the background. The provenance from Paleis Het Loo suggests that the painting was made for the stadholder himself, so it is possible that these rather theatrical gestures are designed to stress the triumphant role of the two generals.
Another version of this painting is slightly larger and on canvas.7
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. 124.
Literature
Van der Sloot 1959, pp. 119-20; Poelhekke in ’s-Hertogenbosch 1979, p. 93, no. 44; Van Thiel 1981a, p. 187; Van Maarseveen 1998a, pp. 83-84, 95; Huiskamp in Münster-Osnabrück 1998, pp. 143-44, no. 414
Collection catalogues
1801, p. 48, no. 25 (as Palamedesz); 1809, no. 395, p. 91 (as Anonymous); 1887, p. 63, no. 500 (as Prince Frederik Hendrik with a General on Horseback at the Siege of Breda, 1637); 1903, p. 127, no. 1178; 1934, p. 129, no. 1178; 1976, p. 276, no. A 607; 1992, p. 57, no. A 607; 2007, no. 124
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Pauwels van Hillegaert, Prince Frederik Hendrik and Count Ernst Casimir at the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1629, 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.6948
(accessed 13 November 2024 07:43:56).