Dirck Stoop was a prolific and successfull Dutch painter active in Utrecht in Holland, and also in Italy, Portugal, England and Germany. He was an excellent horse and animal painter. 

 

Resting hunters or travellers with their animals, sometimes at the entrance of a cavern, rank among his favourite subjects.

 

 

Dutch painter

Dordrecht or Utrecht circa 1618 (1615-1621) – 1686 Utrecht (?)

 

Also known as Theodorus or Roderigo Stoop.

 

Painter of battle scenes, of landscapes with hunters and people on horse-back and of grotto scenes.

 

Son of the engraver and glass painter Willem Jansz. Stoop of Dordrecht, who settled in Utrecht with his family in 1633.

Both Dirck and his brother Maerten, who also became a painter, were pupils of their father. 

 

Dirck possibly travelled to Italy between 1635 and 1645.

He worked in Utrecht between 1647 and 1651, maybe until 1661.

In 1650 he painted his most famous and largest painting, 178 X 478 cm, representing the fall and plundering of Oudewater by Spanish troops in 1575.

 

From 1661 on Dirck Stoop became court painter of the Infant Catharina of Braganza in Portugal. He followed her to London after her marriage in 1662 with King Charles II. He was still active in London in 1665. 

 

From 1667 until 1681 Stoop lived in Hamburg. He was embroiled in a case against the Hamburg Painter's Guild for having contributed decorations to the city's cathedral.

 

In 1682 he returned to Utrecht, where he is said to have died in 1686.

 

Stoop's Italianate landscapes with people on horseback were influenced by Jan Baptist Weenix; there are signed paintings known where both painters worked together.

 

Stoop's cavalry battle scenes show the influence of the Dutch Italianate painters Pieter van Laer and Jan Asselijn. He was especially fond of skirmishes between Christian and Turkish armies. His production of cavalry skirmishes must be dated between 1643-44 and the middle of the 1650.

 

 

Because it must be Stoop’s most elaborate and magnificent composition of resting hunters.