Object data
oil on panel
support: height 25.6 cm × width 34.8 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Pieter Bout
Horsemen Halted on a Mountain Pass
c. 1670
Inscriptions
- signature, lower right: P. bout
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 23 January 2006
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 23 June 2010
Provenance
…; collection of Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911), The Hague;1 from whom on loan to the museum, 1907-11 (SK-C-844); donated to the museum from his estate, 1912
Object number: SK-A-2558
Credit line: Gift of the heirs of C. Hoogendijk, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Pieter Bout (active Brussels from 1670/71 - died Over-Heembeek, Brussels, 1689)
Landscape and painter of figures on a small scale, Pieter Bout’s date and place of birth are not known. A dearth of biographical information was early noted.2 His earliest, extant dated painting is of 16743 but he may have been taught and/or been active in Rotterdam, before his marriage in 1667 in Brussels to Joanna Garnevelt. In 1670/71 he was registered as a master in the Brussels guild of St Luke, and in the same year he is recorded as living in his wife’s stepmother’s house in Over-Heembeek. Bout may have been active in Paris,4 where his portrait was engraved as of ‘van Bouc’ by Gerard Edelinck (d. 1707);5 but as the sitter is not in contemporary costume, the identification is not certain. There Bout may have worked for Adam Frans van der Meulen (1631/32-1690); a copy by him was recorded in the latter’s estate, the prototype having been of 1668 or 1674.6 Bout has long been considered to have executed the staffage in landscapes by, among others, Adrien-François Boudewyns (1644-1719);7 there are apparently no extant works signed by both artists to substantiate this, but a painting attributed to them was already listed in a shipment of 1710 from Ghent to Paris.8 Boudewyns is said to have left Paris for Brussels in 1674, having been active in the French capital for some fifteen years.9 Bout was the beneficiary of a codicil to a will made in Antwerp, 19 March 1684, in which he was described as ‘de schilder Bout tot Brussels’.10 His last dated extant painting is apparently of 1686.11 He was buried in the Sint-Nicolaaskerk in Over-Heembeek on 19 June 1689.12
REFERENCES
J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, pp. 11-23
Entry
There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the signature and so the present picture is one of the few extant signed works by Pieter Bout. The scene of a halt on a mountain pass is unusual though not exceptional in Bout’s oeuvre. The idiom is Bambocciesque, but the landscape is particularly barren even by the norms of that tradition. Less barren but also Italianate is The Forge (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg), signed with initials, with which Babina and then Nica compared it.13 There is no evidence that Bout travelled to Italy. While the painting is one of the most Italianate in his extant oeuvre, it could – like the handling – have been inspired by the followers of Pieter van Laer (1599-1642) in Haarlem, most notably Nicolaes Berchem (1649-1672) and Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668) who likewise never made the journey to Italy. However, no prototype among their works has yet been traced.14
In a list of pictures sent from Ghent to Paris in 1710, one picture by Bout was described as in his ‘eerste manier’ (first manner).15 This most likely refers to those pictures like the Horsemen Halted on a Mountain Pass executed in a Haarlem or northern Netherlandish style. Like Jan Frans Soolmaker (active in Brussels 1654-65),16 Bout may have worked in the United Provinces early in his career. In fact, Nica suggests that Bout was active in Rotterdam in the mid-1660s.17 However, some Bambocciesque paintings by Haarlem school artists are listed in Antwerp inventories from the 1650s,18 which would not rule out that such works could have been known to Bout, when active in Brussels. A stay in Haarlem is not therefore an essential ingredient for the execution of the present work. The support would indicate that it was at all events most probably executed in the Netherlands, as oak was the species of wood predominantly used by panel makers there.
The costume of the horseman smoking a pipe is clearly delineated: he wears a broad beaver hat over a full wig, a tiered cravat, a short jacket, linen shirt, wide petticoat breeches with ribbon points at the waist and base, and full turnovers to the riding boots. The outfit can be dated to circa 1670.19
Both the rear legs of the grey mare should be extended as she makes stale.
Gregory Martin, 2022
Literature
H. Henkels, ‘Cézanne and Van Gogh in het Rijksmuseum voor Moderne Kunst in Amsterdam: De collectie van Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911)’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 41 (1993), no. 3/4, pp. 155-287, esp. p. 239 and 241, fig. 118; J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., diss. Vrije Universiteit, Brussels 1994, I, no. 36
Collection catalogues
1920, p. 95, no. 601a; 1976, p. 139, no. A 2558
Citation
G. Martin, 2022, 'Pieter Bout, Horsemen Halted on a Mountain Pass, c. 1670', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6207
(accessed 10 November 2024 04:12:13).