Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 108 cm × width 176.5 cm
sight size: height 106 cm × width 175.5 cm
frame: height 130 cm × width 199 cm
Pauwels van Hillegaert
Prince Frederik Hendrik at the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1629
c. 1631
Technical notes
The plain-weave canvas support has been lined. Cusping is slightly visible at the top and bottom. The size of what appears to be the intact original canvas is approximately 3 cm smaller than the size of the current support. Vertical craquelure indicates that the canvas may once have been rolled up. The ground layer, visible in the abraded areas and along the edges of cracks, has a light colour. Traces of what is probably a detailed underdrawing are visible with the naked eye. Some pentimenti are present, for example in the front legs of Frederik Hendrik’s horse and in the wheel of the barrow in the foreground on the right. The paint was smoothly applied, with visible brushmarks in the landscape.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: L. Sozzani, RMA, 18 October 2004
Condition
Poor. There are tears, folds and losses throughout. The painting is heavily abraded, has extensive filling and retouching, and was flattened during lining. The varnish is matte in there touched areas, and has discoloured slightly.
Conservation
- Kunsthandel Oenema, Rijswijk, 1986 - 1987: complete restoration
Provenance
...; from the dealer J. Hollender, Brussels, fl. 800, to the museum, February 1885;1 on loan to the Koninklijk Leger- en Wapenmuseum Generaal Hoefer, Leiden, 1978-89; on loan to the Nederlands Legermuseum, Delft, since 1989
Object number: SK-A-848
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
Frederik Hendrik is mounted on a rearing dapple-grey in the left foreground during the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch in 1629. He is surrounded by six other prominent figures, one of whom is probably Ernst Casimir. Behind them are their headquarters near Vught, with the St Lambertuskerk.4 The cartographic nature of the landscape matches that in The Defeated Spanish Garrison Leaving ’s-Hertogenbosch (SK-A-435), which Hofstede de Groot regarded as its companion piece.5
The only person to question the attribution to Van Hillegaert has been Hofstede de Groot, who gave the painting to Henri Ambrosius Pacx instead.6 The style, however, is fully in keeping with that of signed works by Van Hillegaert, most notably in the distinctive horses, the dogs with their elongated legs, and the blue-green tints of the background.
Van Hillegaert depicted the siege and capture of ’s-Hertogenbosch in various ways: as equestrian portraits of Frederik Hendrik with the city in the background, and as small-figured siege scenes with either a cartographic landscape or a realistic, panoramic landscape.7 There is a version of this composition signed by Van Hillegaert and dated 1631 in Paleis Het Loo (fig. a).8 Although the two paintings are not identical, the similarities are so great that the Rijksmuseum work can be dated around the same time. That is also confirmed by the fact that Van Hillegaert very probably based his depiction of the fortifications in the background on the maps of the siege published by Jacques Prempart in 1630.9
Interestingly, the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples has another version signed by Henri Ambrosius Pacx and dated 1632 (fig. b).10 In view of the later date it can be assumed that Van Hillegaert was the inventor of the composition. Pacx’s use of it shows, in any event, that he was well acquainted with Van Hillegaert’s work, but the precise nature of the relationship between the two artists remains unclear.
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. 127.
Literature
Hofstede de Groot 1899a, pp. 165-66 (as Henri Ambrosius Pacx); Poelhekke in ’s-Hertogenbosch 1979, p. 91, no. 42; Van Maarseveen 1998a, pp. 82-83; Van Maarseveen 1998d, p. 470; coll. cat. Baron van Dedem 2002, p. 124
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 63, no. 499; 1903, p. 127, no. 1181; 1934, p. 130, no. 1181; 1960, p. 135, no. 1181; 1976, p. 276, no. A 848; 2007, no. 127
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Pauwels van Hillegaert, Prince Frederik Hendrik at the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1629, c. 1631', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7032
(accessed 23 November 2024 02:10:21).Figures
fig. a Pauwels van Hillegaert, Prince Frederik Hendrik at the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1629, 1631. Oil on panel, 57.5 x 104 cm. Apeldoorn, Museum Paleis Het Loo, inv. no. A5, on loan from the Geschiedkundige Vereniging Oranje-Nassau.
fig. b Henri Ambrosius Pacx, Prince Frederik Hendrik at the Siege of 's-Hertogenbosch, 1629, 1631. Oil on canvas, 85 x 148 cm. Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte. Photo: Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples