Courtyard with a Farrier Shoeing a Horse

A white horse patiently receives a shoe repair from a farrier – a blacksmith specialising in horseshoes. Supervising the shoeing is the horse’s rider, a man dressed in a loose shirt with a jerkin and an elaborate feathered hat. Is this rider a gentleman, or a less reputable character, as his somewhat theatrical clothing seems to suggest? The other figures standing nearby raise similar questions: for example, the two shepherds on the right, one of whom has an unbuttoned jerkin and a falling-down sock. Set against a backdrop of an Italianate ruin, with small plants growing from its crumbled ledges, these enigmatic characters seem in no hurry to move on with their tasks.

This pastoral, romantic scene highlights two of the Dutch artist Philips Wouwerman’s (1619-68) key interests as a painter. Wouwerman, who lived in Haarlem in the Netherlands, was well-known as a painter of horses, as well as of pastoral scenes inspired by the painter Pieter van Laer (1599-1642) and the so-called Bamboccianti, a group of Northern European artists working in Rome and famous for their perceivably bawdy scenes of everyday life. From the 1650s onwards, Wouwerman took increasing interest in landscape, and scenes like this one abound from this part of his career.