Jan van Huchtenburg was one of the major battle scene painters at a time when the European continent was ravaged by numerous wars: the last quarter of the 17th and the first quarter of the 18th century.

 

In his realistic, detailed style he could perfectly portray horses and the intensity of battle. Our painting represents a clash between an Austrian army and Hungarian, Kuruc rebels. There are very few contemporary representations known of this Kuruc revolt.

 

Later in his career van Huchtenburg regularly painted other exotic war scenes between Austrian and Turkish armies, as his most important patron, Prince Eugene of Savoy, was fighting these wars.

 

 

Dutch painter

Haarlem 1647 – 1733 Amsterdam

 

Famous horse painter and painter of battle scenes.

 

His last name is sometimes spelt van Huchtenburgh.

Probably pupil of Thomas Wijck, who was just three years older than him.

 

Jan was the younger brother of Jacob (1644 – 1675), who had studied painting under the Italianate landscape painter Nicolaes Berchem. Jacob stayed between 1662 and 1667 in Rome. On his way back to Holland he remained for more than a year in Paris, where both brothers must have met up.

 

Our Jan van Huchtenburg stayed in Paris between 1667 and 1669, where he was a collaborator of the celebrated Flemish horse and battle scene painter Adam Frans van der Meulen (1632 – 1690). Van der Meulen worked for Charles Le Brun (1619 – 1690), court painter of King Louis XIV and director of the Gobelins Manufactory (that produced the King’s tapestries).

 

Our painter is documented in his native Haarlem between 1669 and 1671; he married here in 1670 a daughter of the Italianate landscape painter Hendrick Mommers. Between 1676 and 1717 he lived in Amsterdam; his wife died here in 1701. He lived in The Hague from 1717 until 1730, when he returned to Amsterdam. He lived there with his daughter Anna Maria until his death three years later in 1733.

 

Van Huchtenburg had many important clients: amongst these stand out Pieter de la Court in Leiden, the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz in Dusseldorf, but above all he worked often for Prince Eugene of Savoy. He accompanied the Prince on his military campaigns as field marshal of the Austrian Habsburg emperors Leopold I, Joseph I and Charles VI since 1707 (when the Prince was made governor of Milan). Between 1712 and 1717 van Huchtenburg painted a famous series of ten large-scale battles that the Prince had fought in during the period 1708/1709. These paintings hang now in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.

 

 

Our painting represents a battle between an Austrian Habsburg army (wearing red scarves) and the anti-Habsburg Kuruc (wearing blue), who were fighting for an independant Kingdom of Hungary. Three men at right in our painting wear the typical Kuruc hat.

 

The first unsuccesful Kuruc uprising started in 1672. In 1677 King Louis XIV of France began to sponsor the revolution hoping to open a new front that would weaken the Austrian army, whom he was fighting the War of the Spanish Succession (1701 – 1714) with all over Europe. Following the childless death of the Habsburg King Charles II of Spain, both the French Bourbons (King Louis XIV) and the Austrian Habsburgs (the Holy Roman Emperors Leopold I and Joseph I) claimed that throne. The War opposed France, Spain, Bavaria against those European states that were afraid that a unified France and Spain would be too powerful: Austria, the Dutch Republic, Great Britain, Prussia, Savoy and Portugal.

 

With the aid of France there were two unsuccessful anti-Austrian uprisings in Transylvania and Hungary:

- the first one under Emeric Thököly between 1678 and 1685;

- the second one under Ferenc Rákóczi II,fought between 1703 and 1711.

In both cases important initial Kuruc successes were finally crushed by the Austrians. 

 

 

In 1673 van Huchtenburg had already painted another cavalry battle between Austrians and Kuruc. That painting was sold in Octobre 2017 at Dorotheum, Vienna, where its interesting subject had not been recognized:

- the Kuruc horsemen wear the same hats as our three figures at right;

- the Kuruc fight under the same yellow banner decorated with a blue cross;

- but what is missing in our painting are the plumed hats of the Kuruc noblemen. 

 

At the time of the second Kuruc revolution, lead by Ferenc Rákóczi II, unniforms were already customary. Therefore our painting, where ennemies could only be indentified by the colours of their scarves, must represent a scene from the first Kuruc revolution lead by Emeric Thököly.

Our painting must therefore date from the first half of the 1680s.

 

 

Because van Huchtenburgh has perfectly captured the intensity and energy of this battle scene, while focusing on just a few main figures.