Horsemen Halted on a Mountain Pass

Pieter Bout, c. 1670

Bij een halteplaats, een soort grot in de heuvelwand, kunnen reizigers en paarden rusten. Het pissende paard op de voorgrond wordt gevoerd. Links twee honden

  • Artwork typepainting
  • Object numberSK-A-2558
  • Dimensionssupport: height 25.6 cm x width 34.8 cm, outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)
  • Physical characteristicsoil on panel

Discover more

more by Pieter Bout

The Adoration of the Shepherds

attributed to Pieter Bout, c. 1680

The Adoration of the Shepherds

Vismarkt te Scheveningen

Pieter Bout (mentioned on object), c. 1664 - c. 1674

Vismarkt te Scheveningen

Vismarkt te Scheveningen

Pieter Bout (mentioned on object), c. 1664 - c. 1674

Vismarkt te Scheveningen

Schaatsers op het ijs

Pieter Bout, c. 1664 - c. 1719

Schaatsers op het ijs

Arrenslee op het ijs

Pieter Bout, c. 1664 - c. 1719

Arrenslee op het ijs

Landschap met veedrijver en enkele figuurstudies

Pieter Bout, 1668 - 1719

Landschap met veedrijver en enkele figuurstudies

Pieter Bout

Horsemen Halted on a Mountain Pass

c. 1670

Inscriptions

  • signature, lower right:P. bout

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 23 januari 2006
  • dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 23 juni 2010

Provenance

…; collection of Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911), The Hague;1Tentoonstelling van schilderijen van Oud-Hollandsche meesters, collectie C. Hoogendijk, The Hague (Pulchri-Studio) 1899, p. 3, no. 7. from whom on loan to the museum, 1907-11 (SK-C-844); donated to the museum from his estate, 1912

Object number: SK-A-2558

Credit line: Gift of the heirs of C. Hoogendijk, The Hague

The artist

Biography

Pieter Bout (active Brussels from 1670/71 - died Over-Heembeek, Brussels, 1689)

Landscape and painter of figures on a small scale, Pieter Bout’s date and place of birth are not known. A dearth of biographical information was early noted.2J. Campo Weyerman, De levens-beschrijvingen der nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over de schilder-konst der ouden: Verrijkt met de konterfeytsels der voornamate konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen in koper gesneden door J. Houbraken, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, III, p. 345. The date of birth is given as 1640/45 by the RKD. His earliest, extant dated painting is of 16743A Carnival on the Ice in an Anon. sale, Brussels (Fievez), 18/19 February 1936 (photograph in the Witt Library). but he may have been taught and/or been active in Rotterdam, before his marriage in 1667 in Brussels to Joanna Garnevelt. In 1670/71 he was registered as a master in the Brussels guild of St Luke, and in the same year he is recorded as living in his wife’s stepmother’s house in Over-Heembeek. Bout may have been active in Paris,4This has been doubted by Nica (J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, p. 11). where his portrait was engraved as of ‘van Bouc’ by Gerard Edelinck (d. 1707);5A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, 3 vols., Leipzig/Vienna 1906-11, I, p. 479. but as the sitter is not in contemporary costume, the identification is not certain. There Bout may have worked for Adam Frans van der Meulen (1631/32-1690); a copy by him was recorded in the latter’s estate, the prototype having been of 1668 or 1674.6I. Richefort, Adam-François van der Meulen (1632-1690): Peintre flamand au service de Louis XIV, Rennes 2004, p. 183, note 2, p. 267. Bout has long been considered to have executed the staffage in landscapes by, among others, Adrien-François Boudewyns (1644-1719);7J. Campo Weyerman, De levens-beschrijvingen der nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over de schilder-konst der ouden: Verrijkt met de konterfeytsels der voornamate konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen in koper gesneden door J. Houbraken, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, III, p. 345; for other artists with whom it has been thought that he collaborated – I. Van der Stock, A.F. Dupont, L. Achtschellink, J. d’Arthois – see Römer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, XIII, p. 399. there are apparently no extant works signed by both artists to substantiate this, but a painting attributed to them was already listed in a shipment of 1710 from Ghent to Paris.8E. Duverger, Documents concernant le commerce d’art de Francisco-Jacomo van den Berghe et Gillis van der Vennen de Gand avec la Hollande et la France pendant les premières decades de XVIIIe siècle, s.l. 2004, p. 95. Boudewyns is said to have left Paris for Brussels in 1674, having been active in the French capital for some fifteen years.9K. Ertz, A. Wied, K. Schütz et al., Die flämische Landschaft, 1520-1700, exh. cat. Essen (Kulturstiftung Ruhr Essen, Villa Hugel)/Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien) 2003-04, p. 379. Bout was the beneficiary of a codicil to a will made in Antwerp, 19 March 1684, in which he was described as ‘de schilder Bout tot Brussels’.10E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, XI, p. 261. His last dated extant painting is apparently of 1686.11Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (T. van Lerius, Catalogue du Musée d’Anvers, Antwerp 1874, no. 27). He was buried in the Sint-Nicolaaskerk in Over-Heembeek on 19 June 1689.12J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, p. 14. Pinchart’s (P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, pp. 68-69) archival discoveries concerning a birth in 1658, a marriage in 1695 and a birth of a daughter in 1702 must refer to another Pieter Bout. His date of death has previously been given as 28 January or 2 February 1719 by Römer (in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, XIII, p. 399); Sellink in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., Basingstoke 1996, IV, p. 589; Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe Siecle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 12.

REFERENCES
J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, pp. 11-23

Entry

There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the signature and so the present picture is one of the few extant signed works by Pieter Bout. The scene of a halt on a mountain pass is unusual though not exceptional in Bout’s oeuvre. The idiom is Bambocciesque, but the landscape is particularly barren even by the norms of that tradition. Less barren but also Italianate is The Forge (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg), signed with initials, with which Babina and then Nica compared it.13N. Gritsay and N. Babina, State Hermitage Museum Catalogue: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Flemish Painting, New Haven (Conn.)/London 2008, p. 25, no. 43; Babina published the State Hermitage picture in 1991 as the work of Bout partly on the basis of a comparison with the Rijksmuseum picture; J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, under no. 36. There is no evidence that Bout travelled to Italy. While the painting is one of the most Italianate in his extant oeuvre, it could – like the handling – have been inspired by the followers of Pieter van Laer (1599-1642) in Haarlem, most notably Nicolaes Berchem (1649-1672) and Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668) who likewise never made the journey to Italy. However, no prototype among their works has yet been traced.14But cf. also The Departure from the Inn by Pieter van Laer (J. Foucart (ed.), Catalogue des peintures flamands et hollandaises du musée du Louvre, Paris 2009, p. 171, inv. 1417).

In a list of pictures sent from Ghent to Paris in 1710, one picture by Bout was described as in his ‘eerste manier’ (first manner).15E. Duverger, Documents concernant le commerce d’art de Francisco-Jacomo van den Berghe et Gillis van der Vennen de Gand avec la Hollande et la France pendant les premières decades de XVIIIe siècle, s.l. 2004, p. 161, no. 120 under no. 1. This most likely refers to those pictures like the Horsemen Halted on a Mountain Pass executed in a Haarlem or northern Netherlandish style. Like Jan Frans Soolmaker (active in Brussels 1654-65),16H. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 33 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXXI, p. 284. Bout may have worked in the United Provinces early in his career. In fact, Nica suggests that Bout was active in Rotterdam in the mid-1660s.17J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, p. 21. However, some Bambocciesque paintings by Haarlem school artists are listed in Antwerp inventories from the 1650s,18E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, VI, p. 495, VIII, p. 40 and IX, pp. 353, 354, 440. which would not rule out that such works could have been known to Bout, when active in Brussels. A stay in Haarlem is not therefore an essential ingredient for the execution of the present work. The support would indicate that it was at all events most probably executed in the Netherlands, as oak was the species of wood predominantly used by panel makers there.

The costume of the horseman smoking a pipe is clearly delineated: he wears a broad beaver hat over a full wig, a tiered cravat, a short jacket, linen shirt, wide petticoat breeches with ribbon points at the waist and base, and full turnovers to the riding boots. The outfit can be dated to circa 1670.19V. Cumming, A Visual History of Costume: The Seventeenth Century, London 1984, nos. 102, 107, 116. Nica dates the costume to the late 1660s, see J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, under no. 36.

Both the rear legs of the grey mare should be extended as she makes stale.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

H. Henkels, ‘Cézanne and Van Gogh in het Rijksmuseum voor Moderne Kunst in Amsterdam: De collectie van Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911)’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 41 (1993), no. 3/4, pp. 155-287, esp. p. 239 and 241, fig. 118; J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., diss. Vrije Universiteit, Brussels 1994, I, no. 36

Collection catalogues

1920, p. 95, no. 601a; 1976, p. 139, no. A 2558

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'Pieter Bout, Horsemen Halted on a Mountain Pass, c. 1670', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026728

(accessed 10 December 2025 13:20:42).

Footnotes

  • 1Tentoonstelling van schilderijen van Oud-Hollandsche meesters, collectie C. Hoogendijk, The Hague (Pulchri-Studio) 1899, p. 3, no. 7.
  • 2J. Campo Weyerman, De levens-beschrijvingen der nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over de schilder-konst der ouden: Verrijkt met de konterfeytsels der voornamate konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen in koper gesneden door J. Houbraken, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, III, p. 345. The date of birth is given as 1640/45 by the RKD.
  • 3A Carnival on the Ice in an Anon. sale, Brussels (Fievez), 18/19 February 1936 (photograph in the Witt Library).
  • 4This has been doubted by Nica (J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, p. 11).
  • 5A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, 3 vols., Leipzig/Vienna 1906-11, I, p. 479.
  • 6I. Richefort, Adam-François van der Meulen (1632-1690): Peintre flamand au service de Louis XIV, Rennes 2004, p. 183, note 2, p. 267.
  • 7J. Campo Weyerman, De levens-beschrijvingen der nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over de schilder-konst der ouden: Verrijkt met de konterfeytsels der voornamate konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen in koper gesneden door J. Houbraken, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, III, p. 345; for other artists with whom it has been thought that he collaborated – I. Van der Stock, A.F. Dupont, L. Achtschellink, J. d’Arthois – see Römer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, XIII, p. 399.
  • 8E. Duverger, Documents concernant le commerce d’art de Francisco-Jacomo van den Berghe et Gillis van der Vennen de Gand avec la Hollande et la France pendant les premières decades de XVIIIe siècle, s.l. 2004, p. 95.
  • 9K. Ertz, A. Wied, K. Schütz et al., Die flämische Landschaft, 1520-1700, exh. cat. Essen (Kulturstiftung Ruhr Essen, Villa Hugel)/Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien) 2003-04, p. 379.
  • 10E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, XI, p. 261.
  • 11Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (T. van Lerius, Catalogue du Musée d’Anvers, Antwerp 1874, no. 27).
  • 12J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, p. 14. Pinchart’s (P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, pp. 68-69) archival discoveries concerning a birth in 1658, a marriage in 1695 and a birth of a daughter in 1702 must refer to another Pieter Bout. His date of death has previously been given as 28 January or 2 February 1719 by Römer (in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, XIII, p. 399); Sellink in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., Basingstoke 1996, IV, p. 589; Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe Siecle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 12.
  • 13N. Gritsay and N. Babina, State Hermitage Museum Catalogue: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Flemish Painting, New Haven (Conn.)/London 2008, p. 25, no. 43; Babina published the State Hermitage picture in 1991 as the work of Bout partly on the basis of a comparison with the Rijksmuseum picture; J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, under no. 36.
  • 14But cf. also The Departure from the Inn by Pieter van Laer (J. Foucart (ed.), Catalogue des peintures flamands et hollandaises du musée du Louvre, Paris 2009, p. 171, inv. 1417).
  • 15E. Duverger, Documents concernant le commerce d’art de Francisco-Jacomo van den Berghe et Gillis van der Vennen de Gand avec la Hollande et la France pendant les premières decades de XVIIIe siècle, s.l. 2004, p. 161, no. 120 under no. 1.
  • 16H. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 33 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXXI, p. 284.
  • 17J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, p. 21.
  • 18E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, VI, p. 495, VIII, p. 40 and IX, pp. 353, 354, 440.
  • 19V. Cumming, A Visual History of Costume: The Seventeenth Century, London 1984, nos. 102, 107, 116. Nica dates the costume to the late 1660s, see J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, under no. 36.