VAN DER MEULEN
Van der Meulen, a native of Brussels and pupil of Snayers, was the historiographer of Louis xiv.’s campaigns and victories. He was invited by Colbert to come to Paris, and was first employed to furnish designs for the Gobelins manufactory. Afterwards he accompanied Louis xiv. on his warlike expeditions, which he immortalised in numerous large paintings, most of which are now at the Louvre and in the Château at Versailles. His paintings are of considerable topographical interest, as they give accurate representations of the aspect of famous towns and fortresses in the seventeenth century, as in the Entry of Louis XIV. and Marie-Thérèse into Arras (No. 2035), a similar scene at Douai (No. 2033), and the Arrival of the King in the Camp before Maastricht (No. 2040). It was Van der Meulen who founded the “tactical school” of battle painting, which substituted the orderly movement of masses for the wild mêlée of the hand-to-hand combat. Whole armies are seen advancing or retreating in long lines from a high vantage-ground which is generally occupied by the considerably larger figures of the army-leaders on rearing and caracoling horses, and looking for all the world like “gens de qualité qui joueraient aux échecs avec des soldats de plomb.” The official Catalogue mentions no fewer than twenty pictures by Van der Meulen.