Battle Scene

Philips Wouwerman, an important Haarlem painter from the mid-seventeenth century, is best known for his elegant hunting scenes. In his early career, however, he specialized in boldly expressive depictions of military encounters. Wouwerman’s dynamic vision of men and horses in the midst of battle seems to have been inspired by non-Dutch pictorial sources, which he would have known primarily through prints. Chief among these was Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630), whose etchings of battle scenes featuring rearing horses and close combat were widely circulated and enormously influential during the early seventeenth century. The dramatic poses of men and horses recall the oeuvre of Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), but one can also recognize the influence of the Italianate painter Pieter van Laer (1599–1642), whose sketchbook Wouwerman owned.

Images of warfare had a long tradition in Netherlandish painting, from sixteenth-century representations of peasant revolts to the various combat scenes that were popular during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). For Wouwerman, this long-drawn-out and devastating war may have become a particularly topical subject following his short period of study in northern Germany in 1638–1639, where he may have witnessed or heard firsthand accounts of the armed conflicts in that country.

In this powerful work from about 1645/1646, the viewer is presented with a violent skirmish between Dutch and Spanish soldiers. As the fierce confrontation rages on, dead bodies lie strewn on the ground and a maimed drummer tries to flee from the mayhem. Instead of extolling the heroism of military exploits, Wouwerman bears witness to a brutal display of human violence and the suffering that results. For all of the cold realism of the subject matter, Wouwerman painted this scene with a remarkably subtle palette and close attention to detail. Every element is carefully integrated into a dynamic composition that displays his considerable artistic skill at perspective and lifelike representation of bodies in motion.