Support The support consists of three horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 28.7, 21.9 and 24.6 cm), approx. 0.7 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks and some plane marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1611. The panel could have been ready for use by 1622, but a date in or after 1628 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends over the edges of the support. The first, slightly translucent cream-coloured layer is followed by a thin, yellowish layer containing a small number of tiny earth pigments.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed a sketchy underdrawing in what appears to be a liquid medium. Its rather thick, cursory, repetitive lines give a broad indication of the placement of the figures. The recumbent man in the lower right foreground registers darker in the infrared photograph than the rest of the underdrawing.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. A first lay-in was applied in brownish tones, roughly delineating the composition and indicating some dark and light areas. This undermodelling is still partly visible along the contours of the figures and shows through in the thinly executed brown parts of the landscape and the lower part of the tree trunk on the right. The sky was blocked in, after which the figures were modelled further and given sharp contours, the latter accentuating the painting’s linear character. Many fine lines, often following the shapes depicted, such as the drapery folds, were used for modelling. The thinly applied, smooth, brown areas in the foreground contrast with passages containing white pigment, which were done more thickly and display some brushwork.
Ige Verslype, 2012

Fair. The joins of the panel are slightly open but appear stable. Some small, discoloured retouchings are apparent along the edges of the picture plane. The varnish has yellowed and saturates poorly.

…; from the dealer F. Muller & Co., Amsterdam, fl. 400, to the museum, through the mediation of the Vereniging Rembrandt, December 1904

Object number: SK-A-2153

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

Military uniforms did not yet exist when Jan Martens painted this skirmish between cavalrymen of the Spanish and Dutch armies in 1629. Instead, the men identified themselves with sashes of different colours, red for the Spaniards and orange, blue or black for the Dutch.³³M.P. van Maarseveen, ‘The Calvalry Battle in Dutch Art during the First Half of the Seventeenth Century’, in H.L. Visser and D.W. Bailey (eds.), Aspects of Dutch Gunmaking, Zwolle 1997, pp. 97-126, esp, p. 121. The rider in armour and a black sash and feathers at the centre of this scene is thus a soldier of the States army of the Dutch Republic. He has just put paid to his opponent with a pistol shot at close range. The sense of drama is heightened by the body of a Spaniard lying in a pool of his own blood in the foreground. The shadowed passage in the middle ground is the curtain-raiser to the brightly lit fighting in the background, where a States cavalryman with a blue sash is valiantly warding off his assailants, one of whom is on the point of dispatching him. The clouds of smoke rising from the battlefield indicate the fierceness of the charge.

When hostilities resumed in 1621, after the Twelve Years’ Truce, cavalry skirmishes became extremely popular in Dutch art.⁴⁴M.P. van Maarseveen, ‘Ruitergevechten en slagveldscènes uit de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw’, in M.P. van Maarseveen, J.W.L. Hilkhuijsen and J. Dane (eds.), Beelden van een strijd: Oorlog en kunst vóór de Vrede van Munster 1621-1648, exh. cat. Delft (Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof) 1998, pp. 107-34, esp. p. 131. Esaias van de Velde, Martens’s uncle, introduced the genre in the Republic, producing his first serious painting of a cavalry engagement in 1621.⁵⁵Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in G.S. Keyes, Esaias van den Velde 1587-1630, Doornspijk 1984, pl. 290. After a brief period in which he was still working under the influence of Sebestiaen Vrancx in the southern Netherlands, where the subject had already been popular for a while, Van de Velde developed his own prototype around 1626, lowering the horizon in order to give greater prominence to the fighting and less to the landscape.⁶⁶M.P. van Maarseveen, ‘Ruitergevechten en slagveldscènes uit de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw’, in M.P. van Maarseveen, J.W.L. Hilkhuijsen and J. Dane (eds.), Beelden van een strijd: Oorlog en kunst vóór de Vrede van Munster 1621-1648, exh. cat. Delft (Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof) 1998, pp. 107-34, esp. pp. 113-14; see also G.S. Keyes, Esaias van den Velde 1587-1630, Doornspijk 1984, pp. 103-15. This was probably the very period when his nephew started training with him.⁷⁷See Biography. Martens’s earliest work, of which this Cavalry Charge is a good example, therefore still owes a great debt to Van de Velde, not just in the composition, which is fairly closed and with the focus on relatively few figures, but also in the sharp outlines. After his uncle’s death in 1630 Martens soon shook off Van de Velde’s idiom.⁸⁸M.P. van Maarseveen, ‘Ruitergevechten en slagveldscènes uit de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw’, in M.P. van Maarseveen, J.W.L. Hilkhuijsen and J. Dane (eds.), Beelden van een strijd: Oorlog en kunst vóór de Vrede van Munster 1621-1648, exh. cat. Delft (Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof) 1998, pp. 107-34, esp. p. 116. His landscapes became broader and roomier, with more varied compositions and a greater number of figures. The sharp contours were replaced by a fluent manner, with greater colour contrasts and chiaroscuro effects. A good example of this is a 1636 battle scene in a private collection.⁹⁹Illustrated in H.L. Visser and D.W. Bailey (eds.), Aspects of Dutch Gunmaking, Zwolle 1997, p. 87. Together with the two other important followers of Van de Velde, Palamedes Palamedesz and Pieter de Neyn, Martens handed the tradition of the cavalry skirmish on to the next generation. Interest in the subject began to wane after the Peace of Münster in 1648, and the genre began to change direction under the influence of Philips Wouwerman.¹⁰¹⁰M.P. van Maarseveen, ‘Ruitergevechten en slagveldscènes uit de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw’, in M.P. van Maarseveen, J.W.L. Hilkhuijsen and J. Dane (eds.), Beelden van een strijd: Oorlog en kunst vóór de Vrede van Munster 1621-1648, exh. cat. Delft (Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof) 1998, pp. 107-34, esp. pp. 118, 131-32.

Richard Harmanni, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

T. von Frimmel, Blätter für Gemäldekunde, III, Vienna 1907, p. 134; L.J. Bol, Holländische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den grossen Meistern: Landschaften und Stilleben, Braunschweig 1969, p. 248; G.S. Keyes, Esaias van den Velde 1587-1630, Doornspijk 1984, p. 185; M.P. van Maarseveen, ‘The Calvalry Battle in Dutch Art during the First Half of the Seventeenth Century’, in H.L. Visser and D.W. Bailey (eds.), Aspects of Dutch Gunmaking, Zwolle 1997, pp. 97-126, esp. p. 108; M.P. van Maarseveen, ‘Ruitergevechten en slagveldscènes uit de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw’, in M.P. van Maarseveen, J.W.L. Hilkhuijsen and J. Dane (eds.), Beelden van een strijd: Oorlog en kunst vóór de Vrede van Munster 1621-1648, exh. cat. Delft (Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof) 1998, pp. 107-34, esp. pp. 116-17

1905, p. 211, no. 1525a; 1976, p. 369, no. A 2153

Richard Harmanni, 2026, 'Jan Martens de Jonge, Cavalry Charge, 1629', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20028282