Object data
oil on panel
support: height 41.8 cm × width 49.2 cm
outer size: depth 8 cm (support incl. frame)
Philips Wouwerman
A Horse Fair near an Army Camp
c. 1665 - 1668
Technical notes
Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 1 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1635. The panel could have been ready for use by 1644, but a date in or after 1654 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, white ground extends over the edges of the support.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. While most of the figures were reserved, the head of the rider on the right grey was added on top of the background, as was the knot of the red sash of the man in the foreground and part of the red cape of the little boy behind him. The background and middle ground were painted rather opaquely. The foreground appears to be built up with a semi-transparent warm brownish underpainting, which has remained partly visible, for instance in the small figure on the far right. Adjustments to the contours of the figures on the left have become visible. The paint surface is smooth, with some impasto in the leaves of the tree on the right.
Ige Verslype, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 1 November 2007
- infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA, 2 November 2007
- paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-C-272/1-2, 6 November 2007
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 9 September 2008
Condition
Fair. The paint appears to have lost its colour along the grain of the wood, resulting in greyish stripes.
Provenance
...; sale, Johann Heinrich G. Lausperg, Frankfurt am Main (F. Wilmans et al.), 28 March 1815, no. 337 (‘Sur bois, 18½ pouces de large, sur 16 de haut [40.6 x 47 cm]. Un camp de cavalerie hollandaise sur le devant on distingue surtout un officier monté sur le devant un beau cheval blanc tigré, derrière lequel vient un autre. Un officier debout et le dos tourné ayant une large écharpe rouge, cause avec celui-ci; auprès de lui est un petit garcon qui joue avec un chien. Plusieurs chevaux et cavaliers enrichissent ce tableau où l’on voit un camp dans le lointain. L’artiste l’a marqué de son monogramme. [...]’);¼; collection Count Andrey Raumovsky (1752-1836), Vienna, 1815;1...; acquired by Albertus Brondgeest in Mannheim;2...; from whom purchased by Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, 1837;3 by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;4 on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 18855
Object number: SK-C-272
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)
Copyright: Public domain
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 1639.6 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,7 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
This painting has long been known as An Army Camp, but John Smith called it A Horse Fair in the 1842 supplement to his oeuvre catalogue,8 and it is certainly true that the latter title is more appropriate when one looks at the right half of the scene. There are stone houses in the background, and, in addition to several soldiers, the foreground features numerous figures in civilian clothes, such as the couple seen from the back near the grey on the right and the two men examining the brown horse in the centre. Philips Wouwerman probably combined both subjects in order to make the staffage as lively as possible. The army camp is no longer the subject but the setting.9
The 1815 sale catalogue of the Lausperg collection states that the painting has a monogram,10 but none was found during technical examination and there is no mention of an inscription in the early Rijksmuseum inventories. However, there is no need to doubt the autograph nature of the work, because the execution is completely in line with that of signed pictures by the artist. Schumacher has suggested that there is studio involvement, particularly because of weak passages in the background.11 Many of the figures in that part are still in an initial, undermodelling stage, but it is doubtful that they are by another hand.
The many figures rob the composition of the clarity of a painting like An Army Camp in the Rijksmuseum.12 The cluttered structure of the scene and it ‘overcrowdedness’ characterize Wouwerman’s late work,13 so it would have been made in the closing years of his life.14
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, IX, London 1842, p. 163, no. 74; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 520, no. 836; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, p. 298, no. A317
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 194, no. 1656; 1903, p. 304, no. 2718; 1934, p. 325, no. 2718; 1976, p. 615, no. C 272
Citation
Gerdien Wuestman, 2022, 'Philips Wouwerman, A Horse Fair near an Army Camp, c. 1665 - 1668', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6601
(accessed 13 November 2024 06:31:10).