Het gevecht tussen Gerard Abrahamsz Houwelingen en Pierre de Bréauté op de Vughterheide, 5 februari 1600

About this artwork

…; ? a French or Netherlandish collection;{On a label on the reverse is an inscription in French attributing the painting to Palamedes; this is the only inconclusive evidence of a French or Netherlandish provenance.}…; sale, Jan Hendrik Cremer (1813-85, Brussels), Amsterdam (F. Muller _et al._), 21 June 1887, no. 40, as Sebastiaan Vrancx, fl. 95, to ‘het Ministerie’ for the museum;{Copy RKD. NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 167, no. 196 (28 June 1887; no. 1336 KW); NHA, ARS, Kop, no. 289, pp. 148-49, no. 329 ...

Art Historical Context

Sebastiaen Vrancx’s dynamic oil-on-panel painting captures a dramatic skirmish that took place on the Vughterheide heath near ’s-Hertogenbosch on 5 February 1600. The scene shows the confrontation between the Dutch officer Gerard Abrahamsz Houwelingen and the French-born commander Pierre de Bréauté, an episode rooted in the closing stages of the Eighty Years’ War. Painted around 1635, roughly three decades after the event, the work reflects the continuing fascination with recent military history in the newly independent Dutch Republic. Vrancx, a leading Flemish specialist in battle scenes, ex...