I. INTRODUCTION

The resounding victories that Stadtholder Frederick Henry, commander of the army of the States General, achieved in the second half of the seventeenth century provided artists with ample material with which to immortalize him in oils. Frederick Henry's chief successes - the siege of Bois-le-Duc ('s-Hertogenbosch or Den Bosch)(1629), the conquering of Maastricht (1632), the capture of Breda (1637) and the siege of Hulst (1645) were recorded several times and in different ways by a variety of painters. This article provides an overview of the artists who painted such representations. The emphasis will be on their manner of visualization, their choice of subject matter, and, where applicable, their patrons.

Before turning attention to the paintings of feats of arms following the end of the Twelve Years Truce (1609-21), however, it is necessary to give a short overview of representations of the first phase of the Eighty Years War.



II. PAINTINGS FROM THE FIRST PHASE OF THE EIGHTY YEARS WAR

The 1570s were critical years for the success of the Revolt against Spanish rule in the Netherlands. Towns like Malines (Mechelen), Zutphen and Naarden were plundered, Haarlem was forced to surrender after a siege lasting months, and Alkmaar and Leiden were only just able to withstand the might of the Spanish armies. But it was not until the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century - that is, some twenty to thirty years later - that people began to feel a need to record for posterity the trials and tribulations that they had gone through. The paintings of these events, then, may be regarded as both a contemplation of the past and an attempt to preserve a record of important moments in history for future generations. Very likely many of these works would have been painted to commissions from city authorities or local institutions. [1] In the case of the three panels of the siege of Alkmaar there is no doubt whatever: they were commissioned by the town's two companies of militia. [2] The pictures of the several sieges of Venlo that Frans Everts (active in the first quarter of the seventeenth century) painted in about 1613 for the town hall were also executed on commission. [3] Even where no sources are available in the archives, the pronouncedly documentary character of these early paintings makes it very probable that they were intended for display in some public place.

In the first, defensive phase of the Dutch Revolt the initiative in the struggle lay with the Spanish. The murder of William of Orange in 1584 and the succession of his seventeen-year-old son Maurice of Nassau to the Stadtholdership ushered in a new phase in which the Northern Netherlands managed to retake many towns from the Spanish armies. It is remarkable that, with the exception of the battle of Nieuwpoort, no painting of any of Maurice's victories is known. The Prince's conquests are commemorated on paper and in metal in the form of prints and medallions, but not a single painter seems to have tackled the subject. A satisfactory explanation for this has yet to be proposed.

By contrast, during the same period painters in the Southern Netherlands were recording the scarce Spanish victories. In the Escorial near Madrid there are paintings hanging in the Galería de Paseo depicting the military triumphs of Philip II in the Netherlands. These paintings were executed at the beginning of the seventeenth century by an anonymous Southern Netherlandish artist and little is known about how they came to be painted. They do, however, provide evidence that such representations of contemporary military events were already being made in the Southern Netherlands by about 1600.



III. THE 1630s

It was not until the second quarter of the seventeenth century that successes in the Northern Netherlands came to be illustrated in paintings. The first siege by States General forces to be painted after the end of the Twelve Years Truce was that of Groenlo (Grol) in 1627, which was painted in 1630 by Daniel Cletcher (? - 1632), a painter and engineer living in The Hague. [4] A pendant to this work shows a comparable scene of the siege of Bois-le-Duc in 1629 (pl. 1). With these two works - the only two sieges he ever painted - Cletcher was distancing himself from earlier siege scenes. Whereas the artists who were depicting feats of arms in about 1600, whether they were from the North or the South, always focused attention on the town under siege, in Cletcher's landscape the position of the town has lost much of its importance. Seventeenth-century Northern Netherlandish painters of sieges went for a lower viewpoint which would fall further and further as the century progressed. This meant that attention came to be focused more on the figures in the foreground and what was going on in the middle plane - in Cletcher's case, the march towards the fortifications. In the Southern Netherlands, where Pieter Snayers (1592 - 1667) painted numerous sieges, the high horizon was retained.

The declining angle from which the scene was viewed can also be seen in the work of Pauwels van Hillegaert (1595/6 - 1640). The canvas Prince Frederick Henry at the Siege of Bois-le-Duc, 1629 (pl. 2), which was painted in 1631, is a case in point. The small figures are placed on an imaginary hill, which allows the painter to show the landscape behind the town and the earthworks that Frederick Henry had caused to be built. Van Hillegaert appears to have been inspired by the work of Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573 - 1647), who likewise, in his few known representations of sieges, placed the besiegers' camp at the centre of attention.

Pauwels van Hillegaert was the most important painter of feats of arms of the Eighty Years War. Often he combined his scenes with a portrait of the Stadtholder on horseback (pl. 3), producing in effect small portraits of Frederick Henry with the siege of a town in the background. He would place the portrait of the prince in the filling, dropping the horizon to a quarter of the overall picture so that the portrait of the prince on horseback is sharply contrasted against the sky. These pictures were printed first and foremost as portraits of the prince in his role of military commander, the background being of secondary importance and serving merely as a backdrop. In the case of Frederick Henry van Hillegaert tended to take the siege of Maastricht as his background, and not, surprisingly enough, that of Bois-le-Duc. [5] Besides Frederick Henry, portraits of this kind also exist of Prince Maurice and King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden. [6]

In terms of composition these small equestrian portraits can be divided into two groups. In most cases van Hillegaert painted the general from the side, seated on a prancing horse. The subject regards the spectator with a sideways glance, while the horse turns its head away. In the second type, man and horse are seen from the front, both looking straight at the spectator.

Another artist active at the same time as Pauwels van Villegaert was Hendrik Ambrosius Pacx (1602/3 - after 1658). Pacx too painted equestrian portraits of Frederick Henry with the siege of either Bois-le-Duc or Maastricht in the background. [7] By comparison with those of van Hillegaert, his equestrian portraits are broader in conception, and in all of them the Prince is accompanied by an armiger carrying his helmet. Both artists painted works featuring members of the Stadtholder's family and in stylistic terms they are closely similar. In a number of cases van Hillegaert and Pacx even painted exactly the same scene.

Yet although these two painters often come very close to each other in stylistic terms, when it comes to technique Pacx seems to be the superior artist. Certainly his figures are brighter and sharper. However, in the absence of any research into the life and work of the two men it is difficult to determine how far the relationship between them influenced their work. However, that they were acquainted within each other's paintings is an established fact.



IV. THE 1640s

Most of the paintings of the military successes achieved by the States' army under Frederick Henry date from the 1630s. The death of Pauwels van Hillegaert in 1640 caused a break in the tradition of siege scenes. However, we know of two painters who over the next decade recorded the victories of Frederick Henry and his armies in oils: in the 1640s Gerrit van Santen (active between 1629 and 1650) and Jan Breecker (active between 1632 and 1646) executed a number of paintings for the castle at Buren. Of these, only The Siege of Schenckenschans, 1636 by Gerrit van Santen has survived (Cat. No. 000; pl. 4). [8] The painting shows the retaking of Schenkenschans by the army of the States General in April 1636, following its unexpected capture by Spanish troops a year earlier.

Our knowledge of the activities of Jan Breecker comes from the inventories of Buren Castle, for which he supplied six works in 1644 and 1646. Only one work by him, an equestrian portrait of Frederick Henry dated 1632, has been preserved. [9]



V. MONUMENTAL PORTRAIT SERIES

The small equestrian portraits painted by Pauwels van Hillegaert herald the coming of the series of monumental equestrian portraits that were executed between about 1635 and 1650, of which four are still known. In the early years of the seventeenth century many Dutch regents were keen to decorate their town halls with portraits of the Stadtholder and his family. Chief among the suppliers of these portraits was the Delft artist Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt (1567 - 1641). In the second quarter of the century town councils in the Republic were still ordering portraits of the members of the House of Orange. Now, however, the preferred style was not to show the princes standing, but seated on a horse with some military event taking place in the background. The works in these series of equestrian portraits are conspicuous by their size: they average some 2 metres high and 1.5 metres across.

The first of these series was made by Herman Mijnerts Doncker (before 1620 - after 1656). In 1636 he painted two portraits of Maurice and Frederick Henry on horseback for the town hall of Edam. [10] In 1643 Isaac Isaacsz (1599 - after 1668) did a similar series of equestrian portraits of the Stadtholder's family for the town hall at Harderwijk. [11] This time the series included, besides Maurice and Frederick Henry (pl. 5), William of Orange. In the background of these portraits we see three different successes achieved by forces of the Republic. In the case of Frederick Henry this is the siege of Bois-le-Duc; in the background of the portrait of Maurice we see a squadron of cavalry moving up, suggesting that this is the Battle of Nieuwpoort. [12]

A third series of portraits of members of the House of Orange on horseback is the three pictures painted by Jacob Fransz van der Merck (c. 1610 - 1664) of princes Maurice, Frederick Henry and William II. [13] The last two of these canvases were dated by the artist: 1643 and 1647 respectively. The series differs from the other three mentioned above in that in each painting there is a putto paying tribute to the prince in question with a laurel crown. Such allegorical additions to equestrian portraits are fairly rare.

The last series of equestrian portraits of the House of Orange, again probably painted in the 1640s, hangs in the Royal Palace on the Dam in Amsterdam. [14] The paintings are attributed to the Flemish portrait painter Anselmus van Hulle (1601 - after 1674). The Amsterdam series is the largest of its kind: van Hulle painted equestrian portraits of William of Orange, his three sons Maurice, Frederick Henry and Philip William, and his grandson William II. Although the Princes of Orange are all portrayed expressly as commanders of the army of the States General, unlike the three series by Doncker, Isaacsz and van der Merck described above, these paintings lack any reference to famous battles or sieges. This again is a sign that they were intended principally as portraits, pure and simple: any military activity in the background was mere decoration.

The monumental equestrian portraits of the Prince of Orange are peculiar to the period between about 1635 and 1650. After that, works of this kind ceased to be painted. This has to do only incidentally with the end of hostilities on land with the conclusion of the Treaty of Münster in 1648, since siege scenes continued to be painted in the 1650s. A much more important reason was the First Stadtholderless Period (1650-72). The obstinacy of the young Stadtholder William II, who found it difficult to accept the cessation of hostilities and with them the opportunity to prove himself on the battlefield, ultimately led to an assault on Amsterdam, the city which had thwarted the young prince in his ambitious plans. William's premature death in 1650 saved the province of Holland from further action by this belligerent Stadtholder. By then, however, his behaviour had already discredited the stadtholders and the importance of the House of Orange as a political factor in the arena of the Republic was sharply curtailed.



VI. SIEGE PAINTINGS AFTER THE PEACE OF MÜNSTER

The signing of the Treaty of Münster may have meant that the immediate source of material for the painting of acts of warfare had disappeared, but it did not lead to an abrupt cessation of the genre. On the contrary, in about 1655 the Rotterdam painter Hendrick de Meyer (? - before 1698) suddenly evinced a great interest in depicting two important victories from the autumn of Frederick Henry's generalship. Evidently there was still a market for this kind of thing. In a comparatively short time, roughly from 1654 to 1656, [15] de Meyer produced five paintings of the siege of Breda in 1637 (pl. 6) and seven of the capture of Hulst in 1645 by troops led by Frederick Henry.

De Meyer was probably influenced by the paintings that Pauwels van Hillegaert had done of the siege of Bois-le-Duc. To some extent his paintings are a logical step in the evolution that the genre of siege paintings went through. In his works van Hillegaert had brought the extremely high horizons of the Southern Netherlandish painters back to rather more realistic proportions. De Meyer dropped the horizon even further, so that the ratio of land to sky came out at something like 1:4 and the matter was finally settled in favour of the sky. The effect of this was that the representations became more compact.

It is conspicuous that de Meyer had a pronounced preference for painting the sieges of Breda and Hulst, rather than the capture of Bois-le-Duc or Maastricht. Exceptionally, he painted one picture of the capture of Sas van Gent in 1644 [16] - like the taking of Hulst, one of the last gasps of the Eighty Years War. Why only the one work of the siege of Sas van Gent is known, whereas the capture of Hulst in the following year was to figure frequently in de Meyer's paintings, is a mystery. It may have something do with the fact that with the capture of Hulst the process of securing the Republic was finally complete.

After Hendrick de Meyer gave up painting siege scenes a period of some twenty-five years ensued during which the production of pictures of this kind lay dormant. Then in about 1680 the Dordrecht painter Abraham van Calraet (1642 - 1722) took up the subject again, painting a number of views all of the same siege: that of Breda. Four of these paintings are known, and they are all more or less identical. [17] In terms of the structure of the painting, van Calraet combines de Meyer's low vantage point with the way van Hillegaert portrays Frederick Henry and his retinue at camp in Vught during the siege of Bois-le-Duc (pl. 2). With van Calraet the painting of the armed conflict of the Eighty Years War came to an end. Painters of the last quarter of the seventeenth century preferred to concentrate on events from contemporary history, and the perilous situation in which the Republic found itself in 1672 and the subsequent salvation of the nation by William III certainly provided them with plenty of material. The new Pauwels van Hillegaert was named Jan Huchtenburg. At the end of the seventeenth century he emerged as the visual recorder of the war on land, and in terms of productivity he is van Hillegaert's equal.



VII. TYPES OF REPRESENTATION

When we try to arrive at some kind of classification within the genre of siege scenes from the second quarter of the seventeenth century, we find that, on the basis of subject matter and composition, the paintings can be arranged in four pictorial types.

In the first place there are the panoramas of the town seen from the besiegers' camp. The emphasis in these paintings is almost always on the army camp in the foreground. The besieged town in the distance is of subordinate importance and is seen as nothing more than a silhouette against the horizon. The painter's choice of perspective is crucial to the character of the representation. The extremely high division of land and sky in the work of Pieter Snayers produces quite a different kind of painting when compared with the low horizon used by Hendrick de Meyer.

The second category of siege scenes is really an elaboration of the first, from which it differs in having an equestrian portrait of a general - almost always Frederick Henry - as the chief feature of the foreground. However, although these portraits receive the main emphasis within the painting, they occupy comparatively little of the area of the picture as a whole.

This panorama with equestrian portrait evolved into the third type of representation: the equestrian portrait with a siege in the background. This includes both the small portraits painted by van Hillegaert and the monumental works painted between 1635 and 1650. In all these paintings the portrait of the general on horseback dominates the scene, the warfare being pushed even further into the background.

The last category of siege scenes comprises representations of the exodus of the besieged forces after the signing of the treaty of capitulation. The earliest example of such a withdrawal is The Defeated Spanish Garrison leaving Bois-le-Duc on 17th September 1629 by Pauwels van Hillegaert (Cat. No. 000). [18] Events like these placed the final seal on a victory and were thus, for the victorious side, the crowning moment of a siege often lasting many months.

After van Hillegaert the chief exponent of scenes of departure following a siege was Hendrick de Meyer. In contrast to van Hillegaert's panoramic views, de Meyer's siege-endings are fairly compact (pl. 5).

Apart from the question of which scenes of a siege the painters of the seventeenth century recorded, it is at least as important to know what these paintings did not show. The answer is as extraordinary as it is simple: they do not show us the fighting itself. This has everything to do with the fact that artists painted the town from a great distance and not from the redoubts and trenches that were the actual scene of battle. Commanders seldom ventured into such dangerous parts, preferring to have themselves immortalized in the safety of their base camp where they ran no risk of being shot from their mounts. The stories of Frederick Henry being so bold as to come within range of the town may bear witness to the Prince's courage, but they also make it painfully clear thet the presence of senior officers in the front lines was rare in the extreme.



VIII. PATRONS

As already observed, it seems likely that the Northern Netherlandish paintings of episodes from the first phase of the Eighty Years War were painted on commission for local institutions. Most of the monumental portrait series of the second quarter of the seventeenth century, too, were ordered by local regents. However, whereas these city councils and other institutions chose equestrian portraits against a backdrop of scenes of warfare, Frederick Henry and his court had a clear preference for panoramic views of sieges. The two works that Daniel Cletcher painted of the sieges of Groenlo and Bois-le-Duc were both part of the Stadtholder's collection in the Binnenhof in The Hague. An inventory drawn up in 1632 refers to both these works as hanging in 'His Excellency's gallery' surrounded by a large number of portraits, mythological and biblical pieces and landscapes. [19] Since Cletcher's panels date from 1630 and were already in Frederick Henry's collection two years later, the obvious inference is that they were painted specifically for the Prince. Indeed it is quite possible that Frederick Henry and Daniel Cletcher knew one another personally: Cletcher was not only a member of the guild of St Luke in The Hague (St Luke being the patron saint of painters), [20] he was also quartermaster to John Albert, Count of Solms-Braunfels, who was Frederick Henry's brother-in-law. Besides the two sieges in Frederick Henry's gallery, there another Cletcher in the gallery of Amalia van Solms, the Stadtholder's wife. [21]

Paintings of sieges hung not only in the Stadtholder's Quarters in The Hague but also in the castle at Buren. The old castle, which had passed into the possession of the House of Orange through the marriage of William of Orange to Anne of Egmond-Buren, lay on the route from the Stadtholder's residence in The Hague to the scene of the fighting in the south. Several paintings of major victories by Princes of Orange hung in its long ballroom or gallery.

In 1646 Jan Breecker supplied three works for this hall, depicting the sieges of Bois-le-Duc (1629), Rijnbeek (1633) and Breda (1637), for which on 3 March 1646 he received the sum of 478 guilders. [22] In 1644 Breecker had signed a contract for three paintings showing the crossing of the armies of the States General at Florival in the Flemish part of Brabant, near Brussels. For these he received payment totalling 408 guilders. [23]

Gerrit van Santen painted two large pictures for the new gallery at Buren: one of the siege of Sas van Gent (1644) and one of the siege of Hulst (1645), two of Frederick Henry's very recent successes. At the same time van Santen supplied two paintings of the sieges of Wezel and Schenkenschans, both in small format. For these four works he was paid the sum of 260 guilders on 8 February 1647. [24] He then went on to paint a further five works for the gallery: the sieges of Groenlo (1627), Wezel (1629), Maastricht (1632), Schenkenschans (1636) and Gennep (1641). For these he received payment totalling 790 guilders on 18 December 1647. [25]

Of the fifteen paintings of sieges that hung at Buren, only one of the two pictures of Frederick Henry's siege of Schenkenschans has been preserved (Cat. No. 000; pl. 4). The figure of Frederick Henry appears to be missing from the picture, since none of the horsemen in the foreground has recognizable features or is distinguished by any detail of dress that might identify him as the Prince. The only figure to be a candidate is the man seated on a white horse commanding a group of pikemen, but as he is turned with his back towards us it seems unlikely that this is meant to be the Prince. In the two Cletchers in the Stadtholder's Quarters it is likewise difficult if not impossible to identify Frederick Henry. In fact, in the whole of the Prince's collection of paintings there is not a single example of explicit self-glorification. This is remarkable, considering that in numerous representations of successful sieges the likeness of the Stadtholder is a prominent, not so say dominant, feature. It begins to look as if institutions had a predilection for paintings in which Frederick Henry was portrayed as the victorious general whereas the Prince himself preferred not to place too much emphasis on his contribution to the struggle against foreign domination. Evidently the Stadtholder had no wish to cause the States General, whose servant he nominally was, any offence. [26]

The three artists who recorded Frederick Henry's military successes for him are painters very few of whose works are known. It is striking that the Prince did not avail himself of the services of well-known artists such as Hendrick Ambrosius Pacx or Pauwels van Hillegaert, but we can only guess at the reasons for this. In the case of the castle at Buren, van Hillegaert was not an option, for the simple reason that he died some years before the works for the gallery were commissioned. Similarly, that there were pieces by a painter such as Daniel Cletcher hanging in the Stadtholder's Quarters but nothing by van Hillegaert, who had been producing pictures of members of the House of Orange since at least as early as 1621, [27] is surprising.

Even so, the possibility cannot be ruled out that Frederick Henry owned work by van Hillegaert. Although the artist is unrepresented in Frederick Henry's inventories, treasury accounts and books of ordinances, these sources are far from complete. Besides, inventories of the Binnenhof drawn up in 1754 and 1763/4 and a description of 1763 of the paintings in Het Loo Palace show that in the eighteenth century, at least, the House of Orange owned two works by van Hillegaert: Prince Maurice and Prince Frederick Henry on Horseback [28] and Prince Frederick Henry and Count Ernest Casimir at the Siege of Bois-le-Duc, 1629 (cf. Cat. No. 000). [29] The provenance of these pieces is unknown, but it is not impossible that they were once the property of Frederick Henry.

Besides works painted for local government institutions and the Stadtholder, it would have been natural for some paintings to be produced for the open market. Certainly the many variants of Frederick Henry on horseback at Maastricht or Bois-le-Duc by Pauwels van Hillegaert would appear to point in that direction.[30] Likewise, the fact that Hendrick de Meyer and after him Abraham van Calraet painted several versions of the siege of Breda, all closely similar, would seem to rule out their having been executed for a single patron. Instead, they are a clear sign that there was interest in such paintings from several quarters, though it must be said that we have yet to find archival evidence for this supposition. The fact remains, however, that paintings of sieges were intended first and foremost to hang in government buildings and in the immediate entourage of the Stadtholder's court.



IX. IN CONCLUSION

A total of slightly over a hundred paintings of sieges are known to have been painted in the period 1621-48, a large proportion of them being equestrian portraits. Although this can hardly be said to be a small number, it pales into insignificance when set beside the countless views of battles and warfare in general that cannot be linked to any particular historical event. [31] These paintings were aimed at a much wider public, whereas scenes of sieges were produced chiefly for the regent class. Thus the difference between paintings on the subject of a particular event and representations of military life in general can be traced back to the audience for whom the works were intended.

FOOTNOTES