Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 0.5 cm thick. The bottom edge has been trimmed slightly. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1618 and that the plank includes 20 sapwood rings. The plank could have been ready for use by 1638, but a date in or after 1640 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The triple ground extends up to the edges of the support. The first, beige layer contains coarse white pigment particles and a few small earth pigment particles in a beige matrix. The second, grey layer consists of white pigment and fine black pigment particles with a minute addition of fine red pigment particles. It was also applied to the reverse of the plank. The third, whitish layer is so thin that the underlying grey is readily visible in places.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye, infrared photography or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. A rough sketch of the composition appears to have been made with a lean, black paint, visible in some places under magnification, especially in the main group of figures on the right. The infrared images reveal these lines more clearly, for example in the hair and clothes of the woman on the horse. The colour of the second ground layer was used as a mid-tone in the main group and was left exposed along many of the contours of the compositional elements. First the landscape, building and sky were defined, leaving reserves for the main group and a partial reserve for the boy carrying a bucket. The paint was applied wet in wet, in what appear to be only one or two layers. Small dabs of impasto for highlights and lines for details add to the modelling of the figures and animals. Little black dots serve to indicate the eyes of some of the figures. A greyish paint was blocked in around the black dog at the lower left, bringing it to the fore. A few changes were made during the painting phase: the building was somewhat enlarged by extending the edge of the roof, the chimney top and part of the round, tower-like structure over the sky. Behind the grey horse preparations were made for a tree that was omitted in the final paint layer.
Lisette Vos, 2010

L. Vos, Op jacht naar Dirck Stoop: De restauratie van twee schilderijen en onderzoek naar de schildertechniek van een 17de-eeuwse kunstenaar, PI thesis, University of Amsterdam 2010

Fair. Two knots in the upper part of the reverse were removed at some point. X-radiography revealed the remaining voids, filled with a lead-containing material and obscured by a thin layer of black paint which covers the reverse. At the upper right, a horizontal crack of approx. 13 cm was repaired with a dovetail inlay. The paint is abraded throughout.

…; ? anonymous sale, Dordrecht (J. de Vos), 13 May 1818, no. 22 (‘hoog 17, breed 22½ duim [44.4 x 58.7 cm] Een Italiaansch Landschap, rijk gestoffeerd met Paarden en figuren […]’), fl. 106;…; collection Johannes Rombouts (1772-1850), Dordrecht;¹¹[P.L. Dubourcq], Beschrijving der schilderijen op ’s Rijks Museum te Amsterdam met fac simile der naamteekens, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1870, pp. 246-47, no. L. his nephew, Leendert Dupper Willemsz (1799-1870), Dordrecht, 1850;²²C. von Lützow, ‘Die vormals Dupper’sche Sammlung’, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 5 (1870), pp. 227-30, esp. p. 228. by whom bequeathed to the museum, with 63 other paintings, 12 April 1870³³NHA, ARM, IS, inv. 30, nos. 123 (8 March 1870), 132 (25 April 1870, no. 245); NHA, ARM, Kop., inv. 39, pp. 62-63 (11 May 1870).

Object number: SK-A-395

Credit line: Dupper Wzn. Bequest, Dordrecht

This is a typical example of the many bambocciades, mostly small in size, that Dirk Stoop started painting in 1643. A genteel group of people have paused by an inn during the hunt. The azure blue sky, the golden light reflecting off the clouds with a warm glow, the architecture and the hilly setting leave no doubt that this is a Mediterranean scene. A hunting party at rest was Stoop’s favourite subject, of which there is another picture in Utrecht, also dated 1649.¹²¹²Centraal Museum; illustrated in L.M. Helmus, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum, Utrecht, V: Schilderkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1999, II, p. 1419. See also SK-A-1714. Hunting was an activity reserved for the nobility, and was bound by strict laws and regulations. The contemporary viewer would immediately have recognized ladies and gentlemen of this kind depicted by Stoop, Philips Wouwerman and others as aristocrats. It is not clear what type of game they were hunting here, for none is on display. The gun dogs were bred for their keen sense of smell, and the greyhounds were prized for their good eyesight, speed and stamina.¹³¹³J. Zijlmans, Hond & baas: Een geschiedenis van haat en liefde, The Hague 2002, p. 93.

Hunting parties provided Stoop with an ideal opportunity to paint horses, and the main motif here is the one urinating, technically known as ‘staling’, of which there are several in the artist’s oeuvre.¹⁴¹⁴For example, an undated Horse Staling, present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in the catalogue for the sale, London (Sotheby’s), 9 December 1992, no. 191. It also features in two etchings in Stoop’s series of 12 scenes of horses and riders that was published in 1651, one of which is seen almost in profile too.¹⁵¹⁵F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, XXVIII, Amsterdam 1984, p. 110, no. 5. Stoop borrowed the motif from an etching by Pieter van Laer in a suite of six made shortly before 1640.¹⁶¹⁶F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, X, Amsterdam 1953, p. 6, no. 11. Stoop’s print seems in turn to have been the point of departure for a highly finished drawing by Wouwerman that can be dated to the late 1640s.¹⁷¹⁷‘The Urinating Horse’, Amsterdam Museum, Fodor Collection; illustrated in Q. Buvelot (ed.), Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668), exh. cat. Kassel (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2009-10, p. 143. The figures in the Rijksmuseum picture, with a horse eating out of a trough, a woman on horseback and a seated hunter to the right of her also feature in a painting by Wouwerman that Schumacher dated to 1655-57.¹⁸¹⁸Resting Hawking Party outside an Inn, Aylesbury, Waddesdon Manor, National Trust; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, p. 239; ibid., II, pl. 161. Wouwerman repeated that group in a slightly modified form in another hunting scene of around 1655.¹⁹¹⁹Falconers Halted at an Inn, present whereabouts unknown; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, p. 248; ibid., II, pl. 186. This raises the question of whether Stoop and Wouwerman, who were contemporaries working in the same genre, were directly inspired by each other’s work and may even have been in touch.

Stoop frequently repeated figures in his own pictures, but always with slight variations in poses and combinations. The freedom with which he deployed his own arsenal is demonstrated by the fact that not one of his drawings is a direct, literal preliminary study for a painting, print or part of a composition. For example, it is true that the boy staggering along with a bucket of water in this work appears also in a signed drawing, but there he is standing with the bucket resting on his knee.²⁰²⁰Düsseldorf, Kunstpalast; illustrated in E. Schaar, Niederländische Handzeichnungen 1500-1800 aus dem Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, exh. cat. Düsseldorf (Städtische Kunsthalle) 1968, fig. 1.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtsche Schilders Dirck en Maerten Stoop, I’, Oud Holland 51 (1934), pp. 116-35, esp. pp. 124, 127; De Meyere in D.A. Levine and E. Mai (eds.), I Bamboccianti: Niederländische Malerrebellen im Rom des Barock, exh. cat. Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum)/Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1991-92, p. 268

1870, pp. 246-47, no. L (as dated 1645); 1880, pp. 298-99, no. 348 (as dated 1645); 1887, p. 163, no. 1383 (as dated 1645); 1903, p. 255, no. 2260; 1934, p. 272, no. 2260; 1960, pp. 295-96, no. 2260; 1976, p. 526, no. A 395

Eddy Schavemaker, 2026, 'Dirk Stoop, The Halt of the Hunting Party, 1649', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026367