(Haarlem 1647–1733 Amsterdam)
A cavalry skirmish in a landscape,
signed lower right: Hughtenburg,
oil on canvas, 156.5 x 206 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Karl Anton Fürst von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1811–1885) (according to a wax seal on reverse);
Noble collection, The Netherlands

The present painting is accompanied by a report of Artmorial, The Hague, who identified the wax seal on the stretcher.

Jan van Huchtenburgh counts today as among the most important and successful painters of battles and cavalry skirmishes in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, serving prestigious European clients such as Pieter de la Court van der Voort (1664–1739) from Leiden, Prince Eugene of Savoye (1663–1736) and Elector Johann Wilhelm of the Palatine (1658–1715) in Düsseldorf. Van Huchtenburgh’s success was that he added elegance and bravura to the otherwise cruel scenes of battles and skirmishes and thus brought the genre to a new artistic level, suitable for the homes of the European aristocracy.

Among van Huchtenburgh’s most famous works are the so called Battaglie Sabaude, the series of battles painted for Prince Eugen of Savoye in 1707/08, currently in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin (inv. nos. 886, 887, 889–892, 894, 896–898). Van Huchtenburgh probably met the prince during his journey to the Netherlands. The Sabaudean series stimulated the Elector Palatine to follow and the latter commissioned a series of similar battles, of which two are conserved in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (inv. nos. 2070–2071). Other courtly houses in Europe followed.

The present cavalry battle is in its dynamism, fluid brushwork and colour scheme a characteristic work by the artist and is probably to be dated to the second quarter of the eighteenth century. The battle is not historic. It rather depicts a confrontation between cavalry and artillery, approaching from the back.