The Grey

Support The single, vertically grained, quarter-sawn oak plank is approx. 1.4 cm thick on the left and 0.6 cm on the right. The top edge is uneven and seems to have been trimmed slightly. Plane marks are visible in raking light on the front. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1631. The panel could have been ready for use by 1642, but a date in or after 1648 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, off-white ground extends over the edges of the support at the bottom and on the left and right, but not over the top edge, and barely fills the grain of the wood.
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. The sky and landscape were applied with reserves for the main figures and the tree. Small details such as branches and leaves were subsequently added over the background. A cross-section shows that the sky at upper left was placed directly on top of the ground in two layers: the first being a coarse blue consisting of mostly white pigment with small greyish-blue and bigger blue pigment particles, followed by a thin, finely ground white layer containing small orange and dark, brownish pigment particles. The foreground at lower right was applied on top of the ground in one layer of brownish paint composed of black, red, blue and larger white pigment particles. The paint was thinly applied with dabbed brushstrokes. Small adjustments were made to the contours of the boy’s arm and mouth, and the horse’s mouth.
Anna Krekeler, Ige Verslype, 2022

Good. A damaged area in the lower left corner has been repaired and shows somewhat discoloured retouching. The varnish is slightly matte and has an uneven gloss.

...; ? sale, Anna Catharina Putman (1727-1801), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 17 August 1803, no. 90 (‘Op een grazigen Heuvel, by de Stam van een doden Boom, ziet men een Jongeling, welke een fraai wit gezadeld Paard by het bit houd, terwyl de Ruiter agter den heuvel zich vertoond; op den met kruiden bewassen Voorgrond legt een Hond [...], hoog 17, breed 15 duim [43.7 x 38.6 cm], op Panneel’), fl. 650, to Roos;¹¹Copy RKD....; ? sale, Dirk Versteegh (1751-1822, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 3 November 1823, no. 47 (‘Sur une Colline on voit un cheval blanc, tenu à la bride par un garçon, auprès duquel un chien couché, plus loin un homme près d’un tronc d’arbre [...] de Ph. Wouwerman. B. h. 4 p. 4 p., l. 3 p. 8 p. [44 x 38 cm]’), fl. 928, to M. van den Bergh;²²Copy RKD....; ? sale, Roothaan, Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 29 March 1826, no. 133 (‘hoog 4 p. 4 d., breed 3 p. 7 d. [44 x 37 cm] Paneel. Op eenen Heuvel bij een dorre boomstam staat een Jongeling, houdende een gezadeld paard bij den toom; een zwarte hond ligt bij dezelve op den grond; verder een man bij een boomstam [...]’), fl. 950, to Van den Berg;³³Copy RKD....; collection W.P. van Lennep, Amsterdam, 1867;⁴⁴Tentoonstelling van zeldzame en belangrijke schilderijen van oude meesters, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Arti et Amicitiae) 1867, no. 218. by descent to Margaretha Catharina Messchert van Vollenhoven, née Van Lennep (1815-1891); her sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 29 March 1892, no. 15, fl. 15,000, to the Vereniging Rembrandt; from which, fl. 8,000, to the museum, March 1894

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1610

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The Grey was the penultimate painting by Philips Wouwerman to enter the museum when it was acquired in 1894, and it soon became the favourite of the artist’s twentieth-century admirers.⁷⁷That taste is typified by the remark that it is ‘one of the simplest and most beautiful’ of his works in M. Rooses, De schilderkunst van 1400 tot 1800 in Vlaanderen en Holland, Italië, Duitschland, Spanje, Frankrijk en Engeland, Amsterdam 1908, p. 128. It is in a palette of predominantly brown and grey tints, the only touch of bright colour being the red saddle. Technically the animal is known as a palfrey, a small type of horse of no particular breed for ordinary riding.⁸⁸Hagen in W. Erkelens, M. Frankenhuis and R. Zanderink (eds.), Vorstelijk vee: Vier eeuwen Nederlandse veerassen, exh. cat. Apeldoorn (Paleis het Loo) 2002, pp. 68, 72. Its monumental appearance is due to the low vantage point and the way in which it stands out against the sky, in stark contrast to the small figure on the right, who has been identified as the rider answering a call of nature.

Like the bulk of Wouwerman’s works this panel is undated, but thanks to a 1646 painting of a related scene in Leipzig it is not difficult to place The Grey in the chronology of the oeuvre.⁹⁹Cornelis in J.P. Filedt Kok et al. (eds.), Netherlandish Art in the Rijksmuseum 1600-1700, Amsterdam 2001, p. 224. For the Leipzig painting, in Museum der bildenden Künste, see Klaassen in Q. Buvelot (ed.), Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668), exh. cat. Kassel (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2009-10, pp. 71-73. The signature ‘PH . W’ also indicates an early origin, in or before 1646, because that was the year when Wouwerman expanded his monogram to ‘PHiLS W’.¹⁰¹⁰C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 251. B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, p. 55, assumes that he changed his monogram in 1646 in order to prevent confusion with the works of his brother Pieter, who became a member of the Guild of St Luke that year.

Drawn works by Wouwerman are relatively scarce, certainly in comparison to the scale of his painted oeuvre, and in this case, too, there is no known preliminary study.¹¹¹¹For Wouwerman’s drawings see F.J. Duparc, ‘Leven en werk van Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668)’, in Q. Buvelot (ed.), Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668), exh. cat. Kassel (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2009-10, pp. 16-41, esp. pp. 38-41. One drawing that surfaced recently is probably a copy.¹²¹²See Northern European Old Master Drawings and Oil Sketches, dealer cat. New York/Paris (Haboldt & Co.) 2001-02, pp. 86-87, no. 34, as a preliminary study by Philips Wouwerman; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, p. 303. A painted copy, formerly in the Laporte Collection, Linden, near Hannover, is also documented in which the figure relieving himself is missing; photo RKD. Wouwerman repeated the subject of the grey horse with the red saddle and the solitary figure beside it in several variants.¹³¹³See, for example, the two versions, both in private collections, illustrated in B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, pp. 307-08, nos. A342, A344; ibid., II, 2006, pls. 44, 45.

The Rijksmuseum panel has rightly been associated with Pieter van Laer, whose work had a profound influence on Wouwerman’s in the 1640s.¹⁴¹⁴B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, p. 80. Houbraken mentions a story that Wouwerman had access to the ‘chest with models, drawings and sketches’ by Van Laer, from which he borrowed with abandon; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, p. 75. The composition is particularly reminiscent of his six-piece suite of etchings of horses,¹⁵¹⁵F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, X, Amsterdam 1953, p. 6, nos. 9-14 (ill.), especially the first and fourth prints in the series. although Wouwerman’s palfrey looks far more naturalistic. Schumacher has also drawn attention to similarities to an undated picture by another artist who put his stamp on Wouwerman’s early output, the horse painter Pieter Cornelisz Verbeeck.¹⁶¹⁶Panel, 38 x 30 cm, private collection. See B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, p. 80; ibid., II, 2006, pl. 30. Compare also the drawing by Verbeeck in Haarlem, Teylers Museum; illustrated in M.C. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, II: Artists Born between 1575 and 1630, coll. cat. Haarlem 1997, p. 418, no. 494.

There are two works in Hofstede de Groot’s oeuvre catalogue of 1908 which can be associated with The Grey in the Rijksmuseum.¹⁷¹⁷C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 317, no. 207, and p. 326, no. 250; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, pp. 302-03. One of them, which according to the author is identical to it, was in the Dirk Versteegh sale of 1823,¹⁸¹⁸C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 317, no. 207. That provenance had already been reported in the museum’s catalogue of 1903; B.W.F. van Riemsdijk, Catalogus der schilderijen, miniaturen, pastels, omlijste teekeningen, enz. in het Rijks-Museum te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1903, p. 304, no. 2720. Interestingly, the description mentions a tree stump near the man seated in the background, a detail that is missing in the Rijksmuseum painting. That tree stump is also mentioned in the 1826 catalogue of the Roothaan sale. while the other was supposedly sold at the Putman and Roothaan auctions of 1803 and 1826 respectively.¹⁹¹⁹C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 326, no. 250 (the dimensions of 49 x 37 cm mentioned there differ from those in the sale catalogues). The description from the Roothaan catalogue is pasted onto the back of the Rijksmuseum panel, but it is not clear when this was done. It was probably the same painting in all these cases.²⁰²⁰A nineteenth-century copy was in sale, Vienna (Dorotheum), 7 June 2000, no. 389 (ill.), and a horizontal copy was in a private collection in 1970 (photo RMA).

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 317, no. 207, p. 326, no. 250; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, pp. 62, 80, 302-03, no. A328

1903, p. 304, no. 2720; 1934, p. 325, no. 2720; 1960, p. 348, no. 2720; 1976, p. 615, no. A 1610

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022, 'Philips Wouwerman, The Grey, 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.6592