Battle Scene

By the late 1650s the Dutch Republic had been at peace with Spain for about ten years. The Treaty of Münster in 1648 had closed 80 years of war, yet Dutch collectors went on buying pictures of fighting, and in Haarlem Philips Wouwerman supplied them. This canvas, almost two and a half metres wide, is the largest painting he ever made. Horses, riders and foot soldiers are knotted together so tightly that it is hard to follow any single fight, and the museum names no particular battle. One figure stands clear of the tangle, a rider in a red jacket on a white horse. Wouwerman usually worked on a far smaller scale, for collectors' rooms. In 1764 Prince William V bought this picture from Benjamin da Costa in The Hague. He owned nine paintings by Wouwerman in all, and all nine are now in the Mauritshuis.