The Riding School

In 1658 William Cavendish, an English royalist sitting out Cromwell's rule in exile in Antwerp, published a lavish book on how to school a horse. Handling horses well was a gentleman's accomplishment in the Low Countries of those years, and Wouwerman's Riding School comes out of that world of trained animals, grooms and riders. Its Dutch title, De rijschool, is looser than the English one, because the verb rijden covers both riding and driving, and the picture is sometimes catalogued in English as The Driving School. The canvas is signed PHILS.W at the lower left. In 1795 French troops confiscated the stadholder's paintings and sent them to Paris, and this one came back to The Hague only after Napoleon's fall in 1815. It belongs to the Mauritshuis and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V on the Buitenhof.