Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 0.5 cm thick. The reverse has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1630. The plank could have been ready for use by 1641, but a date in or after 1647 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of lead white, earth pigments, some black pigment particles and an occasional blue pigment particle.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography and infrared photography revealed an extensive underdrawing in what appears to be a dry medium, also visible to the naked eye in several light areas. The figures, the horses, the two dogs on the left, the brownish hound lying in the centre and the spotted one leaping up at the man holding the grey horse’s reins, were indicated with freely applied sketchy lines. Several elements were not followed in the painting stage. The underdrawing included, for example, at least one other figure to the left of the man on horseback. At the bottom right there are many sketchy lines, difficult to read, above and to the right of the black dog, and at the bottom left numerous such lines suggest that more dogs were planned here.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The landscape was indicated with loose, transparent brown brushstrokes, some of which were left exposed, for example under the tail of the grey horse. The sky was roughly blocked in, with reserves for the central figure and his mount. The paints were applied quickly, leaving the ground shimmering through, especially in the head and body of the grey horse. Textured brushstrokes are mainly apparent in the clothing and the browns of the landscape. Thicker paints were used for the highlights in the clouds, the hunting horn, the foliage of the trees and the dogs’ coats. In the final stage, a greyish paint was roughly brushed on around the two rightmost men and between the horses’ legs. X-radiography revealed that the two small hillocks on the left were added on top of the sky. The position of several figures and animals was slightly shifted and small adjustments were made to their contours.
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. The paint layer is abraded and there are old, small losses (now retouched) throughout. The vegetation on the slope on the left has become greyish, probably due to the presence of vivianite in the green paints.

…; sale, Gijsbert de Clercq (1850-1911, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 1 June 1897, no. 97, fl. 740, to the museum, with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt¹¹Copy RKD; NHA, ARS, Kop., inv. 290, p. 229, no. 1547.

Object number: SK-A-1714

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

A small group of hunters has halted in a hilly landscape and is probably just about to set off again.¹⁰¹⁰G. Wuestman, The Golden Age of Dutch Painting: Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum, exh. cat. Doha (Museum of Islamic Art) 2011, p. 79. One of the riders has mounted his horse and is blowing his horn to gather all the hounds around him, another is pulling on one of his boots while a servant looks after his horse, a urinating grey with dark patches on its hindquarters. A low afternoon sun is spreading a golden light over the scene. This painting by Dirk Stoop is based on Pieter van Laer’s Landscape with Hunters in the Mauritshuis, which dendrochronology has shown to have been executed in or after 1640, in other words after Van Laer’s return to the Netherlands.¹¹¹¹F.J. Duparc, ‘A Recently Rediscovered Painting by Pieter van Laer’, in C.P. Schneider, W.W. Robinson and A.I. Davies (eds.), Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, Presented on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge 1995, pp. 68-70. It could also have been derived from a lost, probably autograph replica of the Mauritshuis picture on copper that is known from an early reproductive print by Cornelis Visscher.¹²¹²F.J. Duparc, ‘A Recently Rediscovered Painting by Pieter van Laer’, in C.P. Schneider, W.W. Robinson and A.I. Davies (eds.), Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, Presented on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge 1995, pp. 68-70, esp. p. 68. Stoop borrowed not only the colouring and lighting literally from that scene, which makes the print the less likely source, but also the main motif of the man on horseback who stands out against the sky. The position of the animal’s legs is almost exactly the same. Similar figures that contrast boldly with the background recur in many other works by Stoop, and are also found in Wouwerman’s oeuvre.¹³¹³F.J. Duparc, ‘A Recently Rediscovered Painting by Pieter van Laer’, in C.P. Schneider, W.W. Robinson and A.I. Davies (eds.), Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, Presented on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge 1995, pp. 68-70, esp. p. 69. If both artists had access to the same source of inspiration, that might suggest that they were in touch with each other. Stoop’s borrowings from Van Laer’s painting include the hound leaping lovingly up at its master, another motif that Stoop used on many occasions. Finally, he adopted the background from Van Laer, including the sloping landscape and the hill with trees and bushes bathed in the afternoon light.

Nieuwstraten wrongly cited an unsigned painting with a very similar setting as an example of a collaboration with Jan Both.¹⁴¹⁴Riders Forcing a Horse to Cross a Stream, present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in 28 Old Master Paintings at Surinamestraat 28, dealer cat. The Hague (Hoogsteder Fine Arts) 1989, no. 5. The lighting and subtly executed vegetation in that picture actually come from Van Laer, who was already using those elements in Haarlem around 1640, whereas Both did not do so until he was back in the Netherlands in 1644. In any case, Van Laer was a far more important model for Stoop, and was thus responsible for the popularity of landscapes with hunting scenes in the work of Dutch masters such as Stoop, Wouwerman and Ludolf de Jongh.¹⁵¹⁵For a list of hunting scenes by Van Laer see D.A. Levine, The Art of the Bamboccianti, 2 vols., diss., Princeton University 1984, p. 293, and for Van Laer’s influence on Stoop, see A. Blankert, ‘Over Pieter van Laer als dier- en landschapschilder’, Oud Holland 83 (1968), pp. 117-34, esp. p. 130. Stoop’s earliest dated paintings are from 1643, when Van Laer may still have been alive, and it is possible that they knew each other. Huys Janssen has deduced that Van Laer must have spent some time in Utrecht, where Stoop lived, because on 18 August 1640 he had a document drawn up there. Had he only been on a brief visit to Utrecht, he could just as well have arranged it in Haarlem.¹⁶¹⁶P. Huys Janssen, ‘Pieter van Laer, Benjamin Cuyp, Gerard Douffet and Karel Dujardin in Utrecht’, Mercury, no. 11 (1990), pp. 53-56, esp. p. 53. It is known that Stoop also copied Van Laer’s work, for on 13 March 1652 the Amsterdam art dealer Marten Kretzer authorized someone to collect one such copy for him from Stoop.¹⁷¹⁷A. Bredius, ‘Archiefsprokkelingen’, Oud Holland 56 (1939), p. 125. The dendrochronological analysis of this Rijksmuseum panel suggests that it was most probably ready for use in or after 1647.¹⁸¹⁸See Technical notes. It is difficult to give a precise date because there is barely any evolution in Stoop’s style.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

G. Wuestman, The Golden Age of Dutch Painting: Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum, exh. cat. Doha (Museum of Islamic Art) 2011, p. 79

1903, p. 255, no. 2261 (as falsely signed ‘P.W.’); 1976, pp. 526-27, no. A 1714 (as signed ‘D. Stoop’)

Eddy Schavemaker, 2026, 'Dirk Stoop, Hunters Resting, c. 1645 - c. 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026366