WOUTERUS VERSCHUUR | THE HORSE FAIR

Sale: Christie's, London, March 17, 1989, lot 75, illustrated 

Richard Green, London 

Acquired from the above circa 1990

In both composition and technical construction, Wouterus Verschuur’s rural Dutch country fair reflects the enduring influence of the northern Baroque masters on nineteenth century art, revealing the artist's close study of his Dutch and Flemish predecessors Philips Wouwerman and Peter Paul Rubens.

While the composition's sharply diagonal horizon is an intentional reference to Wouwerman, the hazy landscape dominated by sky, playing a supporting role to the action in the foreground, is on the whole inherently Dutch. Set in the country outside of Verschuur’s hometown of Amsterdam, the atypical angles of the horizon and dark, earthy palette of the lower register of the background combine to further emphasize the central tableau of the two spooked, illuminated horses.

The grey and his rider at center echo the great equestrian portraits of Anthony Van Dyck; the horse’s stance is reminiscent of the levade, a half-rear pose taught at the prestigious riding schools of Europe. The pose, frequently used by Titian and Rubens in their court portraits of kings and emperors to reflect power over chaos, is instead employed in a genre setting of everyday life. 

The horse, in its physicality, is a quintessential Baroque horse, built with the distinct meaty roundness popularized by Rubens and passed down through his student Van Dyck. A singular detail of realism reveals a specific influence of Rubens: the little bubbles of foam around the horse’s mouth, a signature addition, pioneered after years of close observation of equine physiology. Verschuur records the interactions between stablemates and handlers, the calm punctuated only by a rogue dog. The composition also recalls Rosa Bonheur's monumental picture The Horse Fair exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1853, now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 1). Like Bonheur, Verschuur found great commercial success during his lifetime, travelling frequently to Paris and exhibiting at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in the newly built Palais de L’Industrie, where his works were purchased by Emperor Napoleon III. This royal patronage acknowledged Verschuur’s status as a continuation of the proud international tradition of horse painting set forth by Rubens, Van Dyck, and George Stubbs, celebrated for the careful representation of great sporting and war horses, while extending this treatment to the glory of the everyday working horse.