Two Horsemen by a Stream

Pieter Verbeecq dated this small panel 1635, the year he settled in Alkmaar. It measures about 27 by 35 centimetres, and he signed it at the lower right with the letter P and a monogram joining V and B.

Two riders have stopped by a stream. Small pictures of horsemen resting, watering their mounts or pausing on the road were a Haarlem speciality in those years, made to hang in private rooms rather than halls.

Before it came to The Hague the panel belonged to Emil Goldschmidt in Frankfurt and then passed through the J. de Kuijper gallery in Rotterdam, from which the museum bought it in 1897. It belongs to the Mauritshuis and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V on the Buitenhof.