Huchtenburg

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Huchtenburg (van Huchtenburg) is the name of two brothers who were Dutch painters in the second half of the seventeenth century. Both were natives of Haarlem. The main sources about their lives are from the 18th Arie Houbraken and nineteenth century and contradict each other badly.

The elder of the two, Jacob van Huchtenburg (1644, Haarlem - bur. January 8, 1675, Amsterdam), studied under Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem. He went to Italy in 1662 and stayed in Rome until 1667. On his way back to Holland he stayed in Paris between 1667 and 1669, where he probably met up with his brother Jan. He joined the Haarlem artists' guild in 1669. His pictures are probably confounded with those of his brother. In Copenhagen, where alone in 1911 they were catalogued, they illustrate the style of a Dutchman who transfers Berghem's cattle and flocks to Italian landscapes and marketplaces.

Battle of the Boyne between James II and William III, 11 June 1690, Jan van Huchtenburg.

Jan van Huchtenburg (bapt. November 20, 1647, Haarlem - bur. July 2, 1733, Amsterdam), was first taught by Thomas Wijck. On his way to visit his brother in Rome, he may not have got further than Paris, where he served under Antony Francis van der Meulen, then employed in illustrating for Louis XIV.

In 1670 he settled at Haarlem, where he married, practised and kept a dealers shop. His style had now merged into an imitation of Philip Wouvermans and Van der Meulen, which could not fail to produce pretty pictures of hunts and robber camps, the faculty of painting horses and men in action and varied dress being the chief point of attraction.

Later Huchtenburg ventured on cavalry skirmishes and engagements of regular troops generally, and these were admired by Prince Eugene of Savoy and King William III, who gave the painter sittings, and commissioned him to throw upon canvas the chief incidents of the battles they fought upon the continent of Europe. When he died at Amsterdam in 1733, Huchtenburg had done much by his pictures and prints to make Prince Eugene, King William and Marlborough popular. Though clever in depicting a mile or a skirmish of dragoons, he remained second to Philip Wouvermans in accuracy of drawing, and inferior to Van der Meulen in the production of landscapes. But, nevertheless, he was a clever and spirited master, with great facility of hand and considerable natural powers of observation.

The earliest date on his pictures is 1674, when he executed the Stag-Hunt in the Museum of Berlin,and the Fight with Robbers in the Lichtenstein collection at Vienna. A Skirmish at Fleurus (1690) in the Brussels gallery seems but the precursor of larger and more powerful works, such as the Siege of Namur (1695) in the Belvedere at Vienna, where William III is seen in the foreground accompanied by Max Emmanuel, the Bavarian elector. Three years before, Huchtenburg had had sittings from Prince Eugene (Hague museum) and William III (Amsterdam Trippenhuis). After 1696 he regularly served as court painter to Prince Eugene, and we have at [a] Turin gallery a series of eleven canvases all of the same size depicting the various battles of the great hero, commencing with the fight of Zentha against the Turks in 1697, and concluding with the capture of Belgrade in 1717. Had the Duke of Marlborough been fond of art he would doubtless have possessed many works of our artist. All that remained in 1911 at Blenheim Palace, however, was a couple of sketches of battles, which were probably sent to Churchill by his great contemporary.

In 1911, the pictures of Huchtenburg were not very numerous in public galleries. There was one in the National Gallery, London, another at the Louvre. But Copenhagen had four, Dresden six, Gotha two, and Munich had the well-known composition of Tallart taken Prisoner at Blenheim in 1704.