A Riding School

c. 1658 - c. 1660

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 47.4 cm × width 61.8 cm
outer size: depth 4 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, lower right (letters of first name ligated): PHils W

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved and there are selvedges on the left and right. Cusping is visible on all sides, although less so at the top and bottom.
Preparatory layers The single, yellowish-brown ground extends over the tacking edges. It consists of orange, brown and some white pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends over the tacking edges. The composition was built up in only one or two thin layers on top of the ground, holding most of the figures and animals in reserve, whereas smaller elements and the trees and ivy on the right were added on top of the background. A cross-section shows that the blue sky was applied in two layers; the first being a greyish blue consisting of white and some blue pigments, followed by a blue layer containing finely ground, deep blue pigment particles. The dark brown foreground, allowing the ground to show through, was executed in a single, thin layer composed of fine black, orange and some white pigment particles. Minor adjustments were made to the contours of the figures, for example in the hat of the man on the white horse and the couple in the right background. The paint surface is smooth, with some impasto applied with small brushstrokes in the leaves of the trees and in the highlights of the clothing and faces.
Ige Verslype, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-477/1-2, 14 April 2008
infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA, 14 April 2008
technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 14 April 2008

Condition

Fair. The paint surface is slightly abraded and shows a greyish haze in the highest parts of the paint of the blue shirt of the man on the white horse, the greyish sleeves of the man next to him and the blue blanket on the horse on the far right.

Conservation

W.A. Hopman, May 1874: application of copaiba balsam; varnish regenerated

Provenance

...; sale, Jacques Meyers, Rotterdam (auction house not known), 9 September 1722, no. 110 (‘Een Picqeur met Paerden en verdere Beelden [¼]. h. 1 v. 6 d., br. 1 v. 10 en een half d. [47.1 x 58.8 cm]), fl. 330, to Hendrik van Heteren (1672-1749), The Hague;¹ his son, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague (‘Een reyschool, waar in de Piqueur aan verscheiden Discipelen les geeft [...] h. 17 en een agste d., br. 23 en 5 agste d. [44.7 x 61.7 cm] D.’);² his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam (‘Très bon tableau, représentant un manège avec plusieurs chevaux et plusieurs figures. Toile, h 18 l 24 [46.3 x 61.7 cm]’);³ from whom, with 136 other paintings (known as ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), fl. 100,000, to the museum, by decree of Louis Napoleon, King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father, Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809;⁴ on loan to the National Gallery, Washington, 1981-85; on loan to the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, since 2005

Object number: SK-A-477

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 1639.⁵ 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,⁶ 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

The grey horse between the two posts in the middle is practising the capriole, a well-known dressage exercise in which the animal has all four feet off the ground, kicking out its hind legs and then landing with them.⁷ Similar leaps can be seen in many of Philips Wouwerman’s paintings, such as the levade in a work in St Petersburg,⁸ and the courbette in a version in Budapest.⁹

These ‘riding schools’, as such pictures are called, were a typically Dutch subject in the second half of the seventeenth century, and like hunting scenes they recorded the amusements of the elite. Wouwerman was not the only one to produce paintings of dressage,¹⁰ but he was one of the earliest and most important artists to adopt the genre.

Liedtke associated paintings of this subject with prints like the Maneige Royal of 1623 by Antoine de Pluvinel, illustrations by Crispijn de Passe, and the 22-piece Exercise of Cavalry of 1607 by Jacques de Gheyn.¹¹ However, the naturalism of Wouwerman’s horses makes it clear that there was no question of any direct borrowings from those publications. He probably used drawn preliminary studies, few of which have survived.¹²

Wouwerman continued painting riding schools over a long period. The first ones are from the early 1650s,¹³ and the last one from the mid-1660s. Schumacher allocates the Rijksmuseum canvas to the late 1650s or around 1660,¹⁴ which agrees with the elegant setting and the refined use of colour. There are two documented copies, both slightly smaller than the original.¹⁵

The earliest known record of A Riding School is in the 1722 sale of the collection of the Rotterdam collector and art dealer Jacques Meyers.¹⁶ He owned no fewer than 19 paintings by Wouwerman on his death.¹⁷

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. 333, no. 454; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 263, no. 44; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, pp. 70, 169, no. A1, with earlier literature

Collection catalogues

1809, p. 83, no. 356; 1843, p. 72, no. 363 (‘warped cracks, worn all round on the edges of the frame, overpainted in the sky on the left, a worn spot on the rostrum’); 1853, p. 31, no. 335 (fl. 7,000); 1858, pp. 164-65, no. 365; 1880, p. 352, no. 413; 1887, p. 193, no. 1651; 1903, p. 304, no. 2713; 1934, p. 324, no. 2713; 1960, p. 347, no. 2713; 1976, p. 614, no. A 477

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022, 'Philips Wouwerman, A Riding School, c. 1658 - c. 1660', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6603

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