Object data
oil on panel
support: height 80.9 cm × width 116.6 cm
outer size: depth 3.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Pauwels van Hillegaert
Prince Maurits at the Battle of Nieuwpoort, 2 July 1600
c. 1632 - c. 1640
Inscriptions
- signature, bottom centre: P[...] van hill[..]aert
Technical notes
The oak support consists of three planks with a horizontal grain and is bevelled on all sides except the top. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1621. The panel could have been ready for use by 1632, but a date in or after 1638 is more likely. The ground layer, visible at the unpainted edge below, is whitish and thin. The underdrawing is partially visible, indicating that the composition was prepared with an elaborate, detailed preliminary design. The painting was smoothly executed, with visible brushstrokes for visual effects.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 10 August 2004
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 23 May 2005
Condition
Fair. The varnish has severely discoloured.
Conservation
- H.H. Mertens, 1967: complete restoration
Provenance
...; sale, Madame Van Loon-van Winter (†) et al. [section Madame Van Loon-van Winter], Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 26 February 1878, no. 5, fl. 1,600, to the museum;1 on loan to the Oranje-Nassau Museum, The Hague, 1926-32
Object number: SK-A-664
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
Van Hillegaert depicted two of Prince Maurits’s martial exploits in his oeuvre: the disbanding of the Utrecht mercenaries in 1618 (SK-A-155) and the Battle of Nieuwpoort in 1600, the subject of this painting. Although the battle brought Maurits great fame, it was of little strategic value, for he was forced to retreat from the southern Netherlands after the victory, nullifying his success.4
In his characteristic way, Van Hillegaert shows the mounted Maurits in the left foreground on a dark ridge, behind which the battle unfolds in a panoramic landscape. The artist took great care over the scene, not just in the execution but also in the many anecdotal details, like the horse biting a fleeing man in the shoulder in the centre foreground. There is a certain ambitiousness in details like the foreshortening of the fallen soldier in the centre middle ground. The numerous lances in the background, which far exceed the number of soldiers and have a decorative function, can be regarded as the artist’s trademark, and are often found in his other works (see, for example, SK-A-155, SK-A-3125). The realistic, occasionally comical details recall the work of Adriaen van de Venne, who later depicted the same subject in a tapestry design.5
Dendrochronology of the panel has demonstrated that the painting can be placed late in the artist’s oeuvre. The earliest possible date is 1632, but it is more likely that it was executed in or after 1638.
In the estate of Anneken Hoomis, Van Hillegaert’s widow, was a ‘Battle of Flanders’ which she wanted to keep for herself and did not bequeath to her son and heir, Francois van Hillegaert.6 Unfortunately it is impossible to discover whether it was this painting.
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. 129.
Literature
Royalton-Kisch 1987, p. 73
Collection catalogues
1880, pp. 138-39, no. 136; 1887, p. 63, no. 497; 1903, p. 126, no. 1176; 1934, p. 129, no. 1176; 1960, p. 134, no. 1176; 1976, p. 275, no. A 664; 2007, no. 129
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Pauwels van Hillegaert, Prince Maurits at the Battle of Nieuwpoort, 2 July 1600, c. 1632 - c. 1640', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6981
(accessed 12 November 2024 20:55:18).