Halte de cavaliers

Five riders have halted their mounts before a country inn; one has dismounted, boot in hand, while in the foreground two children and a dog splash in a puddle. The horse was Wouwerman’s abiding motif — the virtuoso of equestrian painting returned to it again and again, and here, as so often, a white horse holds the centre of the composition, its companions seen from different angles around it. This Halte de cavaliers was painted in the 1650s, in the middle of the artist’s career. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.