Peasants Fighting near a Village

c. 1646

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 65.5 cm × width 86.5 cm
outer size: depth 8.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, bottom left (letters of first name ligated): PHiLs W

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is visible on all sides.
Preparatory layers The single, orange-yellow ground extends up to the current edges of the support. It consists of yellow pigment with a small addition of white, brown and fine red and orange pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. The background was applied first, leaving reserves for most of the figures in the foreground and the buildings on the left. Some elements were added over the background, such as the crying boy on the right and the small figures on the top of the hill next to the building. A cross-section shows that the bluish-grey sky was applied directly on top of the ground in at least one layer, containing white pigment particles and coarsely ground glassy particles. The darker areas of the foreground consist of one semi-transparent brown layer composed of brown, small black and a few small red pigment particles; a more opaque, yellowish-brown paint was used for the lighter areas. The paint surface is smooth, with some slight impasto in highlighted areas.
Ige Verslype, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA, 6 November 2007
paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-476/1-2, 6 November 2007
technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 6 November 2007

Condition

Poor. The canvas is heavily lined. The paint layer is abraded and has small losses throughout, as well as discoloured retouchings in the sky.The varnish has yellowed.

Conservation

P. J. Thijs, 1794: canvas lined; brought in plane
H. Heijdenrijk, 1903: canvas relined
H. Plagge, 1964: treated
W. Hesterman, 1972: old discoloured retouchings in the sky removed; retouched

Provenance

...; from the estate of the widow De Rameaux to N. Riemersma;¹ sale, J. van Spijk, Rotterdam (Vis), 28 November 1793, no. 2, fl. 125, to N. Muis, for Gerrit van der Pot (1732-1807), Lord of Groeneveld, Rotterdam;² his sale, Rotterdam (Gebr. Van Ryp), 6 June 1808 sqq., no. 145 (‘Hoog 24¼, en breed 32¾ duim [63.3 x 85.5 cm]. Dk. Een Boeren Gehucht, voor ’t welke een hevig gevecht van eene menigte Boeren en Boerinnen [...]’), fl. 600, to J. de Wit, for the museum³

Object number: SK-A-476

The artist

Philips Wouwerman (Haarlem 1619 - Haarlem 1668)

Philips Wouwerman was baptized in Haarlem on 24 May 1619 as a son of the history painter Pouwels Joostensz, who was probably his teacher. De Bie says that he was a pupil of Frans Hals, although their work has nothing in common. An apprenticeship with Pieter Cornelisz Verbeeck is suspected on stylistic grounds. Another important influence was Pieter van Laer, who was also Haarlem-born and bred. It is known from notes made by the artist Matthias Scheits that Wouwerman, who came from a Reformed family, fled to Hamburg in 1638 in order to marry the Catholic Anna Pietersdr van Broeckhoff. He stayed there for a while, working in the studio of the history painter Evert Decker, but two years later he is again documented in his native Haarlem, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Wouwerman’s earliest dated painting is Military Encampment with Soldiers Gambling of 1639.⁴ He joined the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1640, being elected to the office of warden in 1646, and from 1642 and 1651 he served in the St George Civic Guard. Wouwerman made several history pieces with religious subjects for Catholic patrons. It is clear from various sources that he was a prosperous man. Houbraken mentions that he had important patrons from the very beginning of his career, and was able to give his daughter a dowry of 20,000 guilders. He supplemented his income by speculating on the property market and dealing in art. However, there are also indications that he suffered periods of poverty. For example, he is said to have painted his Miracle of St Hubert in 1660 for the clandestine Sint-Bernarduskerk in Haarlem in thanks for the financial support he had received from the parish priest. He remained productive to the end of his life, with his last dated picture, Grey Standing in a Stable,⁵ being executed in the year of his death. He died on 19 May 1668 and was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Haarlem four days later. Paintings by or belonging to him were sold at auction on 7 May 1670, a few months after the decease of his wife.

Wouwerman gained fame as a painter of horses, and specialized in landscapes with riders, ranging from battle scenes and army camps to hunting parties, horse fairs and stables. He also supplied the figures in landscapes by other Haarlem artists like Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Wijnants and Cornelis Decker. His many pupils included Nicolaes Ficke (c. 1620/23-before 1702), Emanuel Murant (1622-c. 1700), Simon Dubois (1632-1708) and Anthonie de Haen (1640/41-in or before 1675). He may also have taught his younger brothers Pieter (1623-1682) and Jan (1629-1666). Wouwerman’s work, which in the eighteenth century fetched some of the highest prices for paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, was imitated by countless others.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022

References
T. Schrevelius, Harlemias, Haarlem 1648, p. 384; C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, pp. 281-82; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, pp. 70-75, 102; R. van Eynden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw, I, Haarlem 1816, pp. 404-06; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 241-44; C.J. Gonnet, ‘De schilders Pouwels, Pieter en Steven Wouwerman’, in F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], VII, Rotterdam 1888-90, pp. 118-26; C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Die Malerfamilie Wouwerman’, Kunstchronik, N.S. 2 (1890-91), cols. 1-5; A. Lichtwark, Matthias Scheits, als Schilderer des Hamburger Lebens, 1650-1700, Hamburg 1899, pp. 43-44; S. Kalff, ‘De gebroeders Wouwerman’, Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift 30 (1920), pp. 96-103; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXVI, Leipzig 1947, pp. 265-68; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, p. 1211; F.J. Duparc, ‘Philips Wouwerman, 1619-1668’, Oud Holland 107 (1993), pp. 257-86; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, pp. 13-21, 25-38; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 357-61

Entry

Philips Wouwerman painted several scenes of village festivities, and did not shy away from portraying excesses like drunkenness and brawling, but this is his only known picture devoted solely to the subject of peasants fighting. The villagers are attacking each other with knives, clubs and anything they can lay their hands on. Some women are trying to drag them apart, and on the right there is a crying child with its hobbyhorse. Details like the upended table in the left foreground with playing cards and a broken flagon beneath it suggest that this is a drinking and gaming session that has got out of hand.⁶ The white tent to the right of the buildings may be part of a fairground.

Scenes of this kind had already been depicted by Pieter Brueghel I in the sixteenth century,⁷ and were still being produced in the second quarter of the seventeenth century by various Haarlem artists, of whom Adriaen Brouwer and Adriaen van Ostade are the best known.⁸ Wouwerman’s slightly caricatural villagers are very comparable to those by his fellow Haarlemer Isack van Ostade.⁹

It is not only the subject of this painting that is primitive; the execution is distinctly unrefined as well. The lighting is fairly even, and the artist made little use of contrasting colours to highlight specific passages, so this is certainly an early work.¹⁰ Schumacher placed it around 1646-47,¹¹ which also seems to be the most plausible on the evidence of the stylistic and compositional similarities to one of Wouwerman’s few dated pictures, Merry Peasants before an Inn of 1646,¹² and his use of the extended monogram that he introduced that year.

The painting came from the Rotterdam collector Gerrit van der Pot van Groeneveld, at whose 1808 sale the museum bought no fewer than four works by Philips Wouwerman.¹³

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, I, London 1829, p. 278, no. 285; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, pp. 592-93, no. 1036; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, pp. 110, 377, no. A533

Collection catalogues

1809, p. 86, no. 362 (as P. Wouwerman); 1843, p. 71, no. 360 (‘of little significance and from a very early period’); 1853, p. 31, no. 332 (fl. 2,000); 1858, p. 64, no. 364; 1880, p. 348, no. 406; 1887, p. 193, no. 1645; 1903, p. 303, no. 2707; 1934, p. 323, no. 2707; 1976, p. 614, no. A 476

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022, 'Philips Wouwerman, Peasants Fighting near a Village, c. 1646', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6595

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