Contact gallery for price		Dirck Stoop c. 1618 – Utrecht – 1686 The Riding School Oil on panel 18 7/8 x 26 1/2 inches (48 x 67,3 cm) Dirck Stoop was the son of Willem Jansz. Stoop, a glass painter who died in 1646.  Both Dirck and his brother Maerten were artists and probably learned the craft from their father.  Dirck was most likely in Italy between 1635 and 1645, where he would have met Jan Both (c. 1615 – 1652) and Jan Baptist Weenix (1621 – 1660/61).  He returned to Utrecht by 1647 and, in 1650, painted the Siege of Oudewater, a work still in the Oudewater Town Hall.  In 1661 he traveled to Lisbon, where he became court painter for Infante Catherine of Braganza, commemorating her journey to England and marriage to Charles II with paintings and etchings.  He continued his work as court painter in London from 1661 to 1665.  From 1667 to 1681 he was embroiled in a case against the Hamburg painter’s guild for having contributed decorations to the city’s cathedral. The subjects in our composition appear in a landscape far from those in the scenes with great oaks and sandy dunes depicted by artists such as Jacob van Ruisdael.  Utrecht’s longstanding ties with Rome had encouraged local artists as early as the sixteenth century to travel to Italy and many spent extended periods in Rome.  One such artist was Cornelis van Poelenburch (1594/95 – 1667) who traveled to Italy in the 1620s and painted historical and biblical scenes in idealized settings with Roman ruins.  However, it was Pieter van Laer (1599 – after 1642), a Haarlem artist also in Rome in the 1620s and known as Bamboccio, who most influenced Stoop.  Van Laer’s depictions of Roman Street life, Italiante landscape, and cattle scenes became popular with the next generation of artists and his compositions and themes were widely disseminated through prints after his paintings. In our painting Dirck Stoop has depicted several riders resting outside the walls of what appears to be a small Italian village.  An old wall and a rough-hewn building with a thatched roof appears at the left side of the painting, encircling the scenery and providing it with an air of intimacy.  In our piece Stoop has devoted much of his attention to the architecture and the figures at the expense of landscape.  Thus, we observe how the figures are brought to life through meticulous detail.  In the foreground we find a man resting on a rock, while his dog waits restlessly and an assistant tends to his horse.  In the other side of the composition a few men are busy improving their riding skills.  The painting is confidently painted, capturing all the atmosphere and charm of the riding school.  The painting is immersed in a hazy golden sunlight, which illuminates the warm earth colors of the region and bestows a light and cheerful atmosphere to the scene, full of narrative anecdote.