HUCHTENBURG, Jan van

Dutch painter. He was taught by the battle painter Jan Wyck, only three years his senior. Around 1667 Huchtenburg set out for Rome, to join his elder brother Jacob, who had studied with Nicolaes Berchem. Jan seems not to have reached the Eternal City, but ended up in Paris, where he worked for several years at the Manufacture des Gobelins under Adam Frans van der Meulen, Louis XIV’s celebrated battle painter. Around 1669 Huchtenburg returned to Haarlem, where he joined the guild of St Luke. In 1676 the artist relocated his studio to Amsterdam, where he became highly successful as a painter of battle pieces. Huchtenburg is best known for the series of ten large-scale battle scenes he painted for Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1708-09, today in the Galleria Saubada in Turin.

Huchtenburg was most appreciated for his realistic portrayal of horses in his battle scenes. In preparation for these, he must have made countless sketches of horses, yet very few are known today.