A Horse Fair near an Army Camp, Philips Wouwerman, c. 1665 - 1668 – (Philips Wouwerman) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Philips Wouwerman

Date: 1668

Size: 42 x 49 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

This painting has long been known as An Army Camp, but John Smith called it A Horse Fair in the 1842 supplement to his oeuvre catalogue,8 and it is certainly true that the latter title is more appropriate when one looks at the right half of the scene. There are stone houses in the background, and, in addition to several soldiers, the foreground features numerous figures in civilian clothes, such as the couple seen from the back near the grey on the right and the two men examining the brown horse in the centre. Philips Wouwerman probably combined both subjects in order to make the staffage as lively as possible. The army camp is no longer the subject but the setting.9 The 1815 sale catalogue of the Lausperg collection states that the painting has a monogram,10 but none was found during technical examination and there is no mention of an inscription in the early Rijksmuseum inventories. However, there is no need to doubt the autograph nature of the work, because the execution is completely in line with that of signed pictures by the artist. Schumacher has suggested that there is studio involvement, particularly because of weak passages in the background.11 Many of the figures in that part are still in an initial, undermodelling stage, but it is doubtful that they are by another hand. The many figures rob the composition of the clarity of a painting like An Army Camp in the Rijksmuseum.12 The cluttered structure of the scene and it ‘overcrowdedness’ characterize Wouwerman’s late work,13 so it would have been made in the closing years of his life.14 Gerdien Wuestman, 2022 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements