Object data
oil on panel
support: height 38 cm × width 33.5 cm
Pauwels van Hillegaert
Prince Frederik Hendrik on Horseback outside the Fortifications of ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1629
c. 1632 - c. 1635
Inscriptions
- signature and date, bottom centre: [......] 16[..]
Technical notes
The support consists of a single oak plank with a vertical grain bevelled on all sides. The reverse is covered with a whitish-greenish paint, possibly dating from the 17th century. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1594. The panel could have been ready for use by 1605, but a date in or after 1615 is more likely. The ground layer has a whitish colour. The paint was smoothly applied, with visible brushstrokes in the landscape and horse, and some impasto for the highlights. A pentimento is present in the foot of the boot.
Scientific examination and reports
- condition report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 10 August 2004
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 29 April 2005
Condition
Fair. The painting is abraded, particularly in the sky, and there are discoloured areas of retouching and filling in the sky, while the varnish is matte. Wooden strips approximately 0.5 cm wide were added on all sides in the 20th century.
Provenance
...; sale, Lady Menzies, Mrs V.L. Hamilton, The Hon. P.L. Kindersley and Mrs H. Pitts [section Various Properties], London (Sotheby’s), 10 July 1963, no. 39, as Palamedes Palamedesz, called Stevaerts, A Military Commander on Horseback, with a Town in the Background, with pendant, as Palamedes Palamedesz, called Stevaerts, A Military Commander on Horseback, with an Army in the Background, £ 1,400 for both paintings, to the dealer L. Koetser, London;1...; from the dealer D.H. Cevat, London, fl. 12,000, to the museum, 1965
Object number: SK-A-4112
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
This portrait of Frederik Hendrik on horseback with the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch in the background was auctioned in 1963 with a companion piece of Frederik Hendrik at the Siege of Maastricht, which is now in the Amsterdams Historisch Museum (fig. a).4 With the exception of the landscapes, the two works are the mirror image of each other. There can be no doubt about the attribution, despite the fact that the signature has become illegible. Both works can be dated in or a few years after 1632, the year of the Siege of Maastricht.
Van Hillegaert produced quite a few equestrian portraits of this kind. The Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof in Delft for example, has a similar one, but with the Siege of Maastricht as the backdrop.5 Both the horse and Frederik Hendrik are in precisely the same pose as in the Amsterdam painting. Only the face and collar are different. They, though, are identical to the face and collar in another portrait of Frederik Hendrik on horseback by Van Hillegaert in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-394). The horse in the present painting is repeated literally in a portrait of King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden.6 The inference is that Van Hillegaert probably composed his many equestrian portraits from separate model drawings of horses, riders, and bust-length portraits. This economical way of working, his large output and the small sizes, suggest that portraits of this kind were intended for the open market.7
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. 128.
Literature
Van Maarseveen 1998a, pp. 84-85
Collection catalogues
1976, p. 275, no. A 4112; 2007, no. 128
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Pauwels van Hillegaert, Prince Frederik Hendrik on Horseback outside the Fortifications of ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1629, c. 1632 - c. 1635', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8687
(accessed 13 May 2024 00:43:31).