Jan van Huchtenburg was born in Haarlem in 1647 as the fifth child (of seven) of Jan Maertenszen van Huchtenburg and Annetje Joosten van Brussel. He was the younger brother of Jacob van Huchtenburg, who also became a painter. After his father died, the painter Hendrick Mommers - his future father-in-law - was appointed as his guardian. Jan was a close friend of Jan Wyck, son of the painter Thomas Wijck, and trained with the latter until March 1663, when Wijck left for England. Subsequently van Huchtenburg was apprenticed to another Haarlem artist, possibly Mommers or Philips Wouwerman. In 1667 he went to Rome, although he probably only made it as far as Paris, where he was recorded later that year as a pupil and collaborator of Adam Frans van der Meulen in the Manufacture des Gobelins, and also of Charles Lebrun. After his return to Haarlem he married Elisabeth Mommers on October 7 1670. 

 

In 1676 van Huchtenburg registered as a citizen of Amsterdam, where he was to remain for several decades. He specialized mostly in battle scenes, typically featuring cavalry charges, much like the present work. Stylistically, he was much influenced by the works of Wouwerman and van der Meulen. He was also known to paint people and horses into other painter’s compositions, such as Gerrit Berckheyde. Van Huchtenburg was a productive and much-sought painter, whose works were eagerly collected at the time. His work was admired by Prince Eugene of Savoy and King William III, who gave the painter sittings, and commissioned him to record on canvas the chief incidents of the battles they fought upon the continent of Europe. For this, he travelled regularly; for instance, Huchtenburg signed a painting of the Battle of Höchstädt with 'Huchtenburgh /B.V. HOOGSTADT/1704’, indicating that he was on the spot of that battle at the time. 

 

Other trips took our painter to Rome ca. 1708/9 and to Düsseldorf in 1711, where he probably delivered painted battle scenes to Elector Johann Wilhelm of the Palatine, and Vienna, where he worked on the series of the battles of Prince Eugene, who did not travel to the North during his governership of the Austrian Netherlands. In 1717 van Huchtenburg moved to The Hague, where he became a member of the Confrérie Pictura in 1719. He stayed there until 1730, when the elderly painter moved back to Amsterdam to live with his daughter Anna Maria. He was buried in the Westerkerk on 2 July 1733, aged 85.

 

As van Huchtenburg’s first known dated works are dated 1674, our drawing, which dates from one year later, may be considered one of the artist’s earliest known works. Swiftly executed in brush over a chalk drawing, it is full of dynamism and action. Although probably a design for a painting, its size and the fact that it is both signed and dated mean it could aso have been intended as an independent ‘picture drawing’. It speaks to the work’s quality that it was owned by the painter Prosper Henry Lankrink (1628 - 1692), who was a great collector of drawings, amassing sheets by Rubens, van Dyck and many other greats of his time. Interestingly, Lankrink - who probably acquired the drawing directly from the artist - also owned a painting by van Huchtenburg, which was among the paintings sold in his sale in January 1692/3 at his house in Covent Garden (no. 386 “a Battel, don by Hukenberge”.)