Pieter Verbeecq

Pieter Verbeecq was a Haarlem specialist in horses and riders, working in the second quarter of the 17th century. He was born in Haarlem around 1610 or a little later and moved about in his early years. In 1635 he settled in Alkmaar, married there and joined the local painters' guild. In 1638 he moved on to Utrecht, and after his first wife died he came back to Haarlem, where he married Elisabeth van Beresteyn in 1643 and entered the guild two years later.

Arnold Houbraken, the biographer of Dutch painters, records that he taught horse painting to Gillis Schagen, the son of an Alkmaar councillor. Verbeecq's small panels of riders and their mounts are often compared with the early work of Philips Wouwerman, the Haarlem horse painter who became far more famous, and it has been suggested that Verbeecq gave him some training. Both men, though, drew on the Italianate scenes of Pieter van Laer, a Haarlem painter back from Rome, and that shared source may explain the likeness just as well. Verbeecq died in Haarlem around 1654.