The support is a horizontally grained oak plank and is bevelled on all edges except for the irregular top. Traces of paint on the top edge nevertheless indicate that this edge is original. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1600. The panel could have been ready for use by 1611, but a date in or after 1617 is more likely. A painted strip was added along the bottom edge at a later date, enlarging the painted surface by 1.1 cm. Losses reveal that the panel was primed with a thin off-white ground layer. Traces of underdrawing are visible. The buildings, which were reserved in the background, were made larger than was planned. The landscape and the houses were painted with broad brushstrokes, but the figures were painted in a smooth manner with carefully placed highlights. The figures were painted on top of the landscape, after the background had dried.

Fair. The figures are abraded. There is some paint loss near the signature and in the sky at upper left, and small losses along the edges and centre left. The very yellowed varnish layer is abraded in the sky.

…; bequeathed to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap by Mrs Mariane A. Domela Nieuwenhuis, née Meijer, Amsterdam, 1886; on loan to the museum from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap since 1917

Object number: SK-C-1533

Credit line: On loan from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap

Two riders are being attacked by four men outside a farmhouse. One of the horsemen is trying to beat off his attackers, while the other one lies lifeless on the ground as his horse gallops off into the distance. If one looks closely at the figures one immediately understands why Van de Velde was so much in demand for painting the figures in works by other artists. Here they have been depicted swiftly and convincingly, and the horse seen from the back on the right is a virtuoso piece of work.

Van de Velde painted many scenes of robbery and plundering like this one, most of them in the 1620s.¹¹Keyes 1984, pp. 131-34, nos. 44-58. The Rijksmuseum’s painting is one of the few from his Haarlem period. There is a precedent in his river landscape dated 1615 in which a village is being sacked,²²Private collection; illustrated in Keyes 1984, pl. 81. but the present work is the first in which a violent subject is depicted so prominently.³³Keyes 1984, pp. 104-05. Van de Velde used a similar composition with buildings on the left for his Village Being Looted at Night in Copenhagen, which is dated 1620.⁴⁴Statens Museum for Kunst; illustrated in Keyes 1984, pl. 300.

Van de Velde was one of the earliest practitioners of this genre in the northern Netherlands.⁵⁵For the evolution of the genre see Keyes 1984, pp. 103-15; Van Maarseveen 1998b. The source of inspiration usually cited is the work of the Antwerp painter Sebastiaen Vrancx, in which the landscape plays quite an important part, as it does with Van de Velde.⁶⁶Keyes 1984, p. 105; Van Maarseveen 1998b, p. 142. Another artist who may have served as an example is David Vinckboons, who worked in Amsterdam.⁷⁷Keyes 1984, pp. 108-09.

The subject must have appealed to the imagination of Van de Velde’s contemporaries, for freebooters (regular soldiers who had deserted or been dismissed from service, and adventurers) had terrorized the country for decades, attacking people and looting.⁸⁸On this see Van Maarseveen 1998b, pp. 138-40. Van de Velde painted The Robbery during the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-21), which was a period of relative peace and quiet.⁹⁹Keyes 1984, p. 105. The ruined state of the farmhouse in the foreground can nevertheless be seen as a reference to the war with Spain.

Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 286.

Keyes 1984, pp. 104-05, 131, no. 44; Van Maarseveen 1998b, p. 143; Van Maarseveen in Delft 1998, pp. 317-18, with earlier literature

1934, p. 289, no. 2450a; 1960, p. 314, no. 2452 A 1; 1976, p. 558, no. C 1533; 2007, no. 286

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Esaias van de Velde, The Robbery, 1616', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026823