A Skirmish of Cavalry c.1646
Oil on canvas | 82.5 x 107.6 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 404533
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The seventeenth century was able to form a distinct idea about the nature of warfare through first-hand experience. The image of land war in the culture of the period was of irrational and chaotic cruelty. Specifically in painting a type of image arose, executed especially by low-life painters working in Italy, many of them French, Flemish or Dutch, which has been called the ‘battle without hero’. In the battles of Salvator Rosa, for example, the individual belligerent is lost in a seething mass of destruction veiled in the shadows of dust and smoke. This painting is essentially ‘battle without hero’. Though flashes of traditional battlefield glamour are visible – the regimental standard and mounted trumpeter silhouetted against the sky – the mass of soldiery is indistinct and indistinguishable in the shadows of the foreground. Closer examination reveals nothing very heroic, only confusion and slaughter. It is not even possible to establish who is fighting for whom. Interestingly if this were a sea battle we would have no difficulty in identifying the Dutch ships or their heroic exploits. Signed lower right: 'PHW'
Provenance
Purchased by George IV in 1811; recorded in the Blue Velvet Closet at Carlton House in 1819 (no 54); in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace in 1841 (no 61)
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Medium and techniques
Oil on canvas
Measurements
82.5 x 107.6 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external)
108.0 x 143.2 x 6.0 cm (frame, external)
Other number(s)