Jan Wyck Haarlem 1652 - 1700 Mortlake near London

The present scene has traditionally been identified as Louis XIV, King of France, crossing the Rhine. An autograph variant, published by Ogden (although without location - see H.V.S. Ogden, English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeenth Century, Ann Arbor 1955, p. 154, reproduced p. 215, fig. 158), is similarly described as 'The French Army Crossing the Rhine'. The supposed scene took place during an extensive campaign by the French, who seized the city of Strasbourg in 1681, an event ratified by the peace of Ryswick in 1697 which recognized the Rhine as the boundary between Germany and France.

The present work was probably painted in England, where Jan Wyck arrived as a young man during the 1660s and established a reputation as a painter of battle scenes, topographical views and hunting scenes. He recorded a number of the military campaigns of King William III, including the Battle of the Boyne and the Siege of Namur. Among his pupils was John Wootton, the first important English painter of hunting scenes.