PHILIPS WOUWERMAN | TWO HORSES RESTING BY A TREE AND A STREAM, WITH SEATED TRAVELERS NEARBY

John Newington Hughes, Esq., Winchester, UK, by circa 1842;

His sale, London, Christie's, 14 April 1848, lot 155, to Norton;

With James Vigeveno, Los Angeles, 1941;

Jacob M. Heimann, New York, by July 1941;

From whom acquired by Anne R. and Amy Putnam, 1946;

By whom gifted to the Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego, 1946 (inv. no. 1946.21).

J. Smith, Supplement to the Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, London 1842, p. 210, cat. no. 210;

C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, vol. II, Esslingen 1908, p. 331, cat. no. 272;

A. Graves, Art Sales from Early in the Eighteenth Century to Early in the Twentieth Century, London 1921, p. 348;

A. Miller and P. Boswell, The Art Digest, 1 January 1948, p. 31;

J.G. Andrews, A Catalogue of European Paintings, 1300-1870, San Diego 1947, p. 122;

The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, San Diego 1960, p. 28;

P.C. Sutton, Dutch Art in America, Washington, D.C. 1986, p. 350 (as attributed to Philips Wouwerman); 

B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The horse painter of the Golden Age, Doornspijk 2006, vol. I, p. 368, cat. no. A506.

This peaceful scene of two horses resting by a tree by Philips Wouwerman, one of the most accomplished and successful seventeenth-century Dutch painter of equestrian subjects, likely dates to the 1650s. By the mid-19th century, it had entered the well known Kentish collection of John Newington Hughes (1776-1847), which featured works such as Joseph Mallord William Turner's The Junction of the Thames and the Medway now in the National Gallery of Art, London.¹

1. Inv. no. 1942.9.87, oil on canvas, 108.8 by 143.7 cm.