Pauwels van Hillegaert
1640 · Dutch Republic · Dutch Golden Age, Baroque
The story
In the Amsterdam archives Pauwels van Hillegaert is usually called a battle painter, and the name fits the pictures that made him known. He painted Prince Maurits, commander of the Dutch army, at his victory over the Spanish at Nieuwpoort in 1600, and Maurits's half-brother Frederik Hendrik at the siege of 's-Hertogenbosch in 1629, the Brabant fortress town the Dutch took after a siege of several months. The princes sit on their horses in the foreground while the troops and the earthworks spread out behind them.
He was the son of Flemish immigrants and was baptised in Amsterdam in 1596. Nobody knows who trained him. Much of his work seems to have been made for the open market rather than on commission, and he often painted a successful composition more than once. In 1639 he joined the Amsterdam civic guard.
He died the following year, in 1640. His son François inherited all his painting tools, his drawings and every unfinished canvas left in the studio.
