The Cavalry Camp

Paintings by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Philips Wouwerman, a specialist in military camp scenes, were much sought after in early eighteenth century Paris, and Watteau’s military works owe a clear debt to them. Like most of Wouwerman’s camp scenes, this painting offers a placid, picturesque image of war in which compositional unity reinforces a vision of social harmony.

This work was included in the exhibition Watteau’s Soldiers: Scenes of Military Life in Eighteenth-Century France.

Dinet, Paris (1742). Possible Pieter van Winter, Amsterdam. Van Loon, Amsterdam (before 1827). Bought by Alphonse de Rothschild, with the rest of the van Loon collection, in 1877. A.J. Bösch sale, April 28, 1885, Vienna, Lot 54, sold for 21,000 florins to Bourgeois. Knoedler. Frick, 1901.

Source: Paintings in The Frick Collection: American, British, Dutch, Flemish and German. Volume I. New York: The Frick Collection, 1968.