Philips Wouwerman

Wouwermans, Philips

Dutch, 1619 - 1668

Philips Wouwerman, a prolific painter of equestrian scenes, hailed from Haarlem, where he was baptized on May 24, 1619. The eldest of three sons born to the painter Pouwels Joosten and Susanna van den Bogert, Pouwels’ fourth wife, Wouwerman probably first learned to paint from his father. According to his earliest biographer, Cornelis de Bie, he was then apprenticed to Hals, Frans.[1] Wouwerman also may have received some training in the representation of horses from the Haarlem artist Pieter Verbeeck (1610/1615–1652/1654).[2] 

In 1638 Wouwerman briefly left the Netherlands for Hamburg. According to Matthias Scheits (c. 1625/1630–c. 1700), a student of the artist, Wouwerman fled the Netherlands in order to marry a Catholic girl, Annetje Pietersz van Broeckhof, against the wishes of his Protestant family.[3] Although no records of the wedding exist in the marriage register of Hamburg’s Catholic community, the fact that Scheits knew Wouwerman personally argues for the validity of his account. Wouwerman’s journey to Hamburg, however, involved more than just a wedding; he also spent some time working in the studio of the obscure German history painter Evert Decker (d. 1647). 

By 1640 Wouwerman and his wife had returned to Haarlem, where the artist was admitted into the local Saint Luke’s Guild on August 8 of that year. In early 1642 Koert Witholt, a Swedish artist, served as his apprentice for a few short weeks. Later that same year Nicolaes Ficke and Jacob Warnars, both from Amsterdam, were also recorded as his pupils. Wouwerman was an active member in Haarlem’s artistic and civic communities. In 1646 he was elected one of the six vinders of the Saint Luke’s Guild, and between 1642 and 1655 he served as a member of the militia company of Sint Joris. He and his wife had many children, of which seven survived.  Wouwerman died at the age of forty-eight on May 19, 1668. He was buried four days later in Haarlem’s Nieuwe Kerk.     

Wouwerman was an extraordinarily productive artist. More than a thousand paintings bear his name, though only a small number are dated, making it difficult to establish a chronology of his work. Attribution issues also exist because a number of studio works and copies were made by his brother Pieter Wouwerman (1623–1682). Wouwerman’s oeuvre consists predominantly of small cabinet paintings of equestrian subjects, such as battle or hunting scenes, army camps, and smithies. He also painted several genre pieces as well as some mythological and religious subjects.  Despite the Italianate quality of much of his work, it is extremely unlikely that he ever traveled to Italy. His style was greatly influenced by Laer, Pieter van, a fellow Haarlem artist who spent fourteen years in Italy from 1625 to 1639; according to Houbraken, after Van Laer died, Wouwerman acquired some of his sketches and studies.[4] 

 

 

[1] Cornelis de Bie, Het gulden cabinet vande edel vry schilder const (Antwerp, 1662), 282.

[2] Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, trans. Edward G. Hawke, 8 vols. (London, 1907–1927), 2:249.

[3] Birgit Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman: The Horse Painter of the Golden Age (Doornspijk, 2006), 16.

[4] Arnold Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen. 3 in 1 vols. (The Hague, 1753; reprint: Amsterdam, 1976), 2:73–75.

 

 

 

Explore Selected Works

Sixteen men, women, and children sit on or walk among seven horses against a landscape with tall, narrow trees, buildings, and distant mountains under a vivid blue sky in this horizontal painting. In the lower left corner, a man and woman approach the group, which are arrayed across a dirt ground. The man carries a large basket with chickens over one arm and doffs his hat with his other hand. Just behind him, the woman carries a flat-bottomed, wide basket of fruit and vegetables balanced on her head. Some of the men in the main group wear wide-brimmed, feathered hats, long coats in shades of peanut brown, black, and scarlet red, and knee-length pants over stockings. The two other women wear gold-trimmed dresses in shimmering orchid pink or sapphire blue. Several of the men and women ride or prepare to ride horses, which range in shades of brown, gray, white, and black. Nine dogs with brown, white, or black fur frolic, stand, or lie among the horses. One boy pours from a jug into a stemmed glass with a flaring bowl, held by a man holding a curling hunting horn. Just beyond this pair, another man, wearing black and sitting on a horse, blows into a curving horn held up in one hand, while his other hand is planted on his hip. All the people have pale pink skin except for two men. One, to our right, is possibly of short stature and he has an olive complexion. He wears a crimson-red jacket and holds a falcon on one gloved hand. The second man has brown skin and holds the reins of a gray horse near the right edge of the composition. Near the lower right corner of the painting, a potted miniature orange tree sits on a ledge next to a peacock who perches nearby. A second peacock’s head peers out from behind the ledge. A fountain just behind the group at the center has water pouring from a stylized fish’s mouth. A sculpted woman riding the fish holds up a long object while water spouts in thin streams from her breasts. Another statue stands between two tall, spear-like trees to our left. To our right, about two dozen people look onto the scene below from a rooftop terrace on a section of the building rising up along the right edge of the painting. There, a band of musicians plays while guests dine at a small table with a peacock-shaped pie, as two more people bring out trays of food. On the front face of that structure, a man and woman talk on a balcony, as a monkey eating an orange perches on the banister. A grassy lawn or garden stretches back to a large manor house, which is hazy in the distance to our right. The horizon comes about a quarter of the way up this composition, and the sky above has bright white and flint-gray clouds against a brilliant blue sky. The overlapping letters “DG” are inscribed on the rump of a horse to our left, near the fountain. Painted in red in the lower right corner, the letters “PHILS” are entwined in a monogram next to a “W.”
Philips Wouwerman, The Departure for the Hunt, c. 1665/1668, oil on panel, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, in honor of Earl A. Powell III, Director of the National Gallery of Art (1992-2019), 2019.2.1

The Departure for the Hunt

Philips Wouwerman · c. 1665/1668 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2019.2.1

A few dozen light-skinned men, some on horseback and some on foot, fight each other on a low hill in this horizontal battle scene. The men and horses are arranged in a band that crosses the horizon of the painting and swells in numbers as it moves to our right. Some men wield guns, knives, or swords as they attack each other. They wear jackets, vests, or suits in black, brown, sage green, currant red, and pale yellow. While much of the action is in chaos, a few details stand out. For instance, a man in the center of the fray lies on the ground, dead or dying. A white horse behind him steps over a second fallen man, and the rider of that horse is about to be bludgeoned. To the left of the fray, a man wearing tattered black clothing looks over his shoulder at the crowd as he lurches away. It appears that one hand may have been severely injured or even cut off, leaving a bloody stump. A large drum lies on the ground nearby. The hill where the fight takes place sweeps gently upward from the lower left corner to more than hallway up the height of the panel to the right. Flags in the hazy distance have red, white, and blue horizontal stripes and a tall, thin tree grows up the right edge of the panel to frame the scene. A pale blue sky is mostly filled with parchment-colored clouds. The artist signed the work with his initials in brown paint in the lower right corner: “PH. W.”
Philips Wouwerman, Battle Scene, c. 1645/1646, oil on panel, Gift of Joseph F. McCrindle in memory of Frederick A. den Broeder, 2000.159.1

Battle Scene

Philips Wouwerman · c. 1645/1646 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2000.159.1

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Album of Prints after Works by Philips Wouverman

Various Artists, Philips Wouwerman · 17th century · bound volume with 63 engravings ·  Accession ID  1956.4.209-271

Bibliography

1737

  • Moyreau, Jean. Oeuvres de Phpe. Wouvermens Hollandois: gravées d'après ses meilleurs tableaux qui sont dans les plus beaux cabinets de Paris et ailleurs. Paris, 1737.

1753

  • Houbraken, Arnold. De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen. 3 vols. in 1. The Hague, 1753 (Reprint: Amsterdam, 1976): 2:70-76.

1891

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. "Die Malerfamilie Wouwerman." Zeitschrift für bildende Künste Beilage Kunstchronik/Neue Folge 2 (1891): column 1-5 and 108.

1907

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 2:249-252.

1920

  • Kalff, S. "De gebroeders Wouwerman." Elsevier’s geїllustreerd maandschrift 59 (1920): 96-103.

1971

  • Bie, Cornelis de. Het gulden cabinet van de edel vry schilderconst. Edited by Gerard Lemmens. Reprint of Antwerp, 1661/1662. Soest, 1971: 281.

1987

  • Sutton, Peter C., et al. Masters of 17th-century Dutch Landscape Painting. Exh. cat. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art. Boston, 1987: 527-534.

1993

  • Duparc, Frederik J. "Philips Wouwerman, 1619 - 1668." Oud Holland 107, no. 3 (1993): 257-286.

2006

  • Schumacher, Birgit. Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age. Aetas aurea 20. 2 vols. Doornspijk, 2006.