Halt of Cavaliers at an Inn

An innkeeper and his wife demonstrate the vital service an inn provided in the seventeenth-century Netherlands: rest and food for horses, and sustenance for travellers. The three cavaliers cut colourful and dashing figures in contrast to their humble hosts and surroundings. They encircle the old woman who pours horse feed into a wooden trough. One cavalier reclines on the ground, one stands at ease, and the third, still with his feet in the stirrups, inspects the contents of a blue and white Defltware jug, perhaps filled with homebrewed ale. Behind the cavaliers, the innkeeper – dressed in dark colours – diligently attends to the other horses, filling a wooden bucket for them. In the foreground, a lean dog sits on its haunches and observes the scene – much like the viewer. The central tree marks the middle of the painting, the right side of the composition opening up to an airy expanse of sky peppered with light tones of pink and blue, and a flock of birds. In the landscape beyond, a stream of travellers approaches the inn, including a covered wagon. 

This is an early work by the prolific Dutch painter Philips Wouwerman (1619-68), an artist well-known for such scenes of travellers halting to rest. The influence of Wouwerman’s contemporary, the Dutch painter of peasant life Pieter van Laer (1599-1642), can be felt strongly here in the painting’s diagonal composition, the earthy colour palette, and the interactions of figures and horses. The artist’s signature of ‘PH W’, in the lower right corner, helps to date the painting to before the year 1646, at which point Wouwerman changed his signature to variants on ‘PHILS. W’. Wouwerman’s work became extremely popular among collectors in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the early 1790s, the founders of Dulwich Picture Gallery even had a room dedicated to Wouwerman where eight of his paintings hung.