Battle Scene from the Wars of the Ottoman Empire in Europe

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: Turkey
    City: Ankara
    Place: British Embassy

    This battle scene is typical of such works by Jan van Huchtenburg as it shows the bodies of soldiers and horses strewn on the ground where they fell. In the centre of the composition, a musket is fired into the torso of a man on horseback, at very close range. In the moment depicted the man holds a blue and gold flag vertically, but he is at the point of falling from his horse. All around the sky is filled with thick clouds and billows of smoke.


  • About the artist
    Jan van Huchtenburg was the younger of two Dutch brothers who both worked as painters in the latter seventeenth century. Huchtenburg first studied painting under the Dutch painter and printmaker Thomas Wyck (1616–1677). He later travelled to Paris where he was employed by the French painter Anthony Francis van der Meulen, battle painter to Louis XIV of France. In 1670 he moved to Haarlem in the Netherlands where he painted scenes of hunts and horsemen in action and was a dealer in fine art. Later he painted the engagements of troops and received commissions from Prince Eugene of Savoy and King William III. From 1696, he worked as court painter to Prince Eugene. Huchtenburg died in Amsterdam in 1733. This work was formerly attributed to the Dutch horse painter Philips Wouwermans (1619–1668). In 2002, a curator at the National Gallery in London suggested a reattribution to Huchtenburg. Both artists worked in a similar manner.
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  • Details
    Title
    Battle Scene from the Wars of the Ottoman Empire in Europe
    Date
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    height: 111.00 cm, width: 137.50 cm
    Acquisition
    Origin uncertain
    GAC number
    15453