(Antwerp 1678–1733)
A cavalry skirmish near a river,
oil on panel, 60 x 97.5 cm, framed

Very few details about the life of Karel Breydel are known so far. Most of the information about Breydel’s life is based on his early biography written by Jean-Baptiste Descamps (La Vie des Peintres Flamands, Allemands et Hollandois, vol. 1, 1764, pp. 190-195). Baptised on 27 March 1678, Karel Breydel was an older brother of Frans Breydel, who became court painter in Kassel. In Antwerp Karel was a pupil of Pieter Rijsbraeck for three years, before he entered the studio of Pieter Ykens. He left for the mandatory trip to Italy, stopping over in Frankfurt and Nuremberg. When he heard about his brother’s success in Kassel, he abandoned his plans, travelling to Kassel instead to join his brother. Here the two brothers worked together for two years with considerable success. Breydel subsequently moved to Amsterdam. He was back in Antwerp in 1703, where he married Anne Bulens. One year later he became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke. He is recorded in Brussels in 1723 and in Ghent in 1726 and he is now believed to have died in Antwerp in 1733.

Karel Breydel is mainly known as a painter of battle pieces and cavalry attacks. These paintings are ingeniously composed and painted with great spirit in the manner of Adam Frans van der Meulen, the leading Antwerp battle painter of the seventeenth century. He also executed a number of landscapes, village scenes, and views of the Rhine in the manner of Griffier. In the present painting, Breydel has combined the classical battle piece with a Rhine landscape, a genre that continued to enjoy great popularity throughout the eighteenth century.