King Louis XIV and his Entourage at the Siege of Schenkenschans, 1672

Inscriptions

inscription, bottom left:SCHENKEN·SCHANS·167[2]

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: M. van de Laar / L. Akerlund, RMA, 2013

Conservation

onbekend, Messrs. Biggs & Son, London, after, 1857 - before 1868: relined and cleaned

Provenance

…; an English collection by c. 1860;¹This is to be inferred from the picture’s treatment in London in the mid-nineteenth century. On the reverse of the neo-classical composition frame is inscribed ‘No 9/Front Room’. The same inscription is on the reverse of the frame of SK-A-4663.…; anonymous sale, London (Christie’s), 25 October 1974, no. 57, with SK-A-4663, as Lambert de Hondt the Younger, 3,150 gns or £ 3,307 s10, to the dealer Terry-Engell, London, for the museum²An Agnew’s ‘waiting order’ label is stuck to the stretcher beneath Christie’s stencil; it looks of fairly recent origin. The number on the label is lost and therefore it would have been difficult to trace in Agnew’s records; the firm’s archive was sold to the National Gallery, and recent information from it remains embargoed. The label indicates that the owner consigned the paintings to Messrs. Agnew, who entered them for sale at Christie’s.

ObjectNumber: SK-A-4662

The artist

Biography

Lambert De Hondt II (active Brussels by 1675 - died (?) Brussels 1708-April 1711)

There is little published information about Lambert de Hondt II, a Brussels-based specialist in the military genre, who became best known, late in his career, as a tapestry designer. He may well have been the son of an obscure Mechelen artist of the same name, by whom there is a signed and dated work of 1636³Katalog der städtischen Kunst- und Gemälde-Sammlung in Bamberg, Bamberg 1909, p. 14, no. 170. and who had died by 10 February 1665, when his widow is recorded as remarrying.⁴E. Neeffs, Histoire de la peinture et de la sculpture à Malines, 3 vols., Ghent 1876, p. 439 (cited in F.-C. Legrand, Les peintres flamands de genre au XVIIe siècle, Paris/Brussels 1963, p. 222). Lambert II was enrolled in the Brussels guild of St Luke in 1678,⁵A. Pinchart, ‘La corporation de peintres à Bruxelles’, Messager des sciences historiques (1878), pp. 315-32, 475-90, esp. p. 475. having worked there with David Teniers II (1610-1690) presumably after having been taught by him as Descamps states.⁶J.B. Descamps, La vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois, avec des portraits, 4 vols., Paris 1753-64, II, p. 158. Because of his position as ayuda de cámara at the governor’s court in Brussels, Teniers was exempt from registering his pupils with the guild. Juan José of Austria (1629-1679) re-appointed Teniers to this position following the departure of the Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm in 1656. Teniers’s privileges did not presumably have to be renewed after Juan José’s departure in 1659 as he did not resign his governorship, see H. Vlieghe, David Teniers (1610-1690): A Biography, Turnhout 2011, pp. 50-51. His association with Teniers is established by letters of 1675 from Teniers’s son to a tapestry weaver and dealer in Oudenaarde in which he is mentioned for the first time.⁷H. Vlieghe, David Teniers (1610-1690): A Biography, Turnhout 2011, pp. 74, 92-93. The RKD gives his date of birth as 1642. The protagonists in two paintings by De Hondt (SK-A-4662 and SK-A-4663), which must have been painted not long after 1672, show a very obvious influence of Teniers’s manner of the 1660s.⁸The handling is similar to that in Teniers’s illustrations of Gerusalemme Liberata in the Museo del Nacional Prado, for which see H. Vlieghe, David Teniers (1610-1690): A Biography, Turnhout 2011, p. 82 and p. 126, note 180. Different are a number of subject paintings in which the figures play a subsidiary role to animals and vegetation, of which one is exceptionally dated 1681.⁹Noah Entering the Ark, signed and dated, 48.3 x 62.9, Trustees of the Weston Park Foundation, Weston Park, Staffordshire (photograph in the Witt Library). Other signed examples are, for instance, Animals Entering the Ark, anonymous sale, London (Christie’s), 8/9 December 1994, no. 141, 56.8 x 42 cm, and After the Flood, anonymous sale, London (Christie’s), 23 February 1995, no. 91, 53.8 x 40.7 cm. Later in his career De Hondt, following the example of Teniers and his son, executed tapestry cartoons; from one set was woven the famous series of the Arts of War, on which rests his claim to fame.¹⁰A.J.B. Wace, The Marlborough Tapestries at Blenheim Palace and their Relation to Other Military Tapestries of the War of the Spanish Succession, London 1968, pp. 117-19; T.P. Campbell (ed.), Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor, exh. cat. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Madrid (Palacio Real) 2007-08, p. 480 under no. 57. The artist received a privilege in Brussels in 1708; three years later a privilege was issued to his son, Philippe, from which it has been inferred that his father had by then died.¹¹A.J.B. Wace, The Marlborough Tapestries at Blenheim Palace and their Relation to Other Military Tapestries of the War of the Spanish Succession, London 1968, p. 112; T.P. Campbell (ed.), Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor, exh. cat. New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Madrid (Palacio Real) 2007-08, p. 475 under no. 56. The RKD gives his date of death as 1708/09.

REFERENCES
H. Vlieghe, David Teniers (1610-1690): A Biography, Turnhout 2011, p. 74; A.J.B. Wace, The Marlborough Tapestries at Blenheim Palace and their Relation to Other Military Tapestries of the War of the Spanish Succession, London 1968, pp. 112-18

Entry

The attribution of the present painting and its companion is discussed in the entry of the latter, SK-A-4663.

The present painting, SK-A-4662, and its companion record the opening actions of the French army in the Franco-Dutch War of 1672-78. In the left foreground of the present painting looking at the spectator is the commander. He has been described as the Vicomte de Turenne (1611-1675), Marshal of France, who led the action;¹²G. de Werd, Schenkenschanz. ‘De sleutel van den Hollandschen tuin’, exh. cat. Kleve (Städtisches Museum Haus Koekkoek) 1986, under no. F8. but more convincing is the figure’s identification as the King Louis XIV (1638-1715) of France. He holds a baton as supreme commander of the French army. The features may be compared with, and was probably inspired by, either the print of 1670 by Nicolas Pitau (1634-1671) after Claude Lefebvre (1632-1675)¹³C. Le Blanc, Manuel de l’amateur d’estampes, 4 vols., Paris 1854-56, III, no. 39, p. 210. or that of 1666 by Robert Nanteuil (1623-1678).¹⁴C. Petitjean and C. Wicket, Catalogue de l’oeuvre de Robert Nanteuil, 2 vols., Paris 1925, II, no. 138. A reserve was left in the painting for the face to be filled in.

The view of the fort of Schenkenschans, which was about 540 metres long and 270 metres wide, is taken from the north-east on imaginary high-ground above the river Spyck – with Eltenenberg, Lobith and the Ameliæ fort – looking in the direction of the city of Cleves which should be in the far distance left, leading in its direction is the winding ditch/stream known as the Vosse Spuij.¹⁵See the aerial view published by C.J. Visscher in F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, Amsterdam/Roosendaal 1948-, XXXVIII, nos. 80, 82-84, and XXXIX, pp. 51-53. The Rhine flows from the left past Griethuijsen (Griethausen) and then divides flowing down past Tolhuijs. From the fork, the river Waal flows past Bijlandt and Bijnen.¹⁶G. de Werd, Schenkenschanz. ‘De sleutel van den Hollandschen tuin’, exh. cat. Kleve (Städtisches Museum Haus Koekkoek) 1986, under no. F8, names the places near the Waal as Haus Halt, Keeken and Bimmen. The land lying between the two rivers is the Over-Betuwe.

The lay-out of Schenkenschans in the present painting follows in a general way that in the engravings of 1635 published by Claes Jansz Visscher (1587-1652); however, the extent of the defences on the landward side are here shown much reduced. As was suggested in the 1986 Cleves exhibition catalogue, it is unlikely that De Hondt ever visited the Lower Rhine. He probably consulted the plans published by Visscher; but none subsequently published on which he could have relied has been traced.¹⁷The plan engraved by Alexis Hubert Jaillot of 1672, consulted in the Map Room of the British Library, gives next to no detail.

Schenkenschans was built by Martin Schenck van Nydeggen (1532?-1589), lieutenant governor of Gelderland, in 1586. Although today a diminutive hamlet following the alteration of the course of the Rhine in the eighteenth century, during the Eighty Years War, it was recognized as of great strategic importance: facing upstream it controlled river traffic entering the United Provinces. The Spanish had hailed as a triumph the stronghold’s surprise capture in 1635; a long siege by the Stadholder Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647) was necessary to reclaim it. The count-duke of Olivares (1587-1645), the chief minister of King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665), described the fort as the ‘finest jewel in those lands with which to settle his [Philip IV’s] affairs’.¹⁸J. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477-1806, Oxford 1995, p. 529. It was taken by the French in 1672, after the capture of Rheinberg, which episode is depicted in the painting’s companion, also in the Rijksmuseum collection (SK-A-4663). Further discussion can be found in that entry.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 25 (1977), no. 2, p. 69 and fig. 3; G. de Werd, Schenkenschanz. ‘De sleutel van den Hollandschen tuin’, exh. cat. Cleves (Städtisches Museum Haus Koekkoek) 1986, no. F8

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 284, no. A 4662 (as attributed to Lambert de Hondt II)

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'Lambert de (II) Hondt, King Louis XIV and his Entourage at the Siege of Schenkenschans, 1672, c. 1675', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.10545

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