Philips Wouwerman

Wouwermans, Philips

Dutch, 1619 - 1668

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

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Man with Horse and Washerwoman in Landscape

Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, Johannes Kornlein, Christian Josi · 1772, published 1821 · chalk manner and roulette printed in black ink ·  Accession ID  1974.6.2.7

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Recueil d'estampes gravées d'après les tableaux du cabinet de Monsieur le duc De Choiseul

Pierre-François Basan, Various Artists, Pierre-Charles Baquoy, Louis Binet, Robert Daudet, Remi-Henri-Joseph Delvaux, Balthasar Anton Dunker, Louis Germain, Carl Guttenberg, Louis-Michel Halbou, Francois-Robert Ingouf, Nicolas Delaunay, Jacques Philippe LeBas, Pierre Charles Levesque, Jean Baptiste Liénard, Charles Louis Lingée, Joseph-C. Maillet, Pierre Maleuvre, Pietro Antonio Martini, Louis-Joseph Masquelier, Jean Massard, Philippe Louis Parizeau, Charles Emmanuel Patas, Nicolas Ponce, Noël Pruneau, Antoine Louis Romanet, Jean Francois Rousseau, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, Vény, Carl Wilhelm Weisbrod, B. A. Wieilh, Pierre-Philippe Choffard, Charles Emmanuel Patas, Carl Wilhelm Weisbrod, Remi-Henri-Joseph Delvaux, Jeanne Deny, Philippe Louis Parizeau · 1771 · bound volume with engraved table of contents and 124 etching and engravings on laid paper ·  Accession ID  1943.16.1

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A Stable

Thomas Rowlandson · · aquatint ·  Accession ID  1945.5.552

Nicolaas Verkolje, The Pissing Horse, 17th/early 18th century, mezzotint printed in brown on laid paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 2007.135.3

The Pissing Horse

Nicolaas Verkolje · 17th/early 18th century · mezzotint printed in brown on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2007.135.3

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.