Lot 8
  • 8

Pieter Brueghel the Younger

Estimate
800,000 - 1,200,000 GBP
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Description

  • Pieter Brueghel the Younger
  • the kermesse of Saint George with the dance around the maypole
  • bears signature and remains of date lower left: P. BREVGHEL 16..
  • oil on panel, transferred to canvas

Provenance

Private collection, Germany, before 1969;
Anonymous sale ("The Property of a German Collector"), London, Christie's, 27 June 1969, lot 105;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 30 March 1979, lot 104;
Charles de Pauw, Brussels;
His deceased sale, London, Sotheby's, 9 April 1986, lot 9.

Literature

K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere (1564-1637/38). Die Gemälde mit Kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Lingen 1988/2000, vol. II, p. 907, cat. no. E1231.

Condition

The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has recently been transferred from panel to canvas. There are small clusters of craquelure along the top edge, with retouchings visible under ultra violet light in the upper corner with a larger patch of retouching above the church and a smaller retouching to the left of the maypole. The edges have occasional retouchings where they have been rubbed by the frame. The overall craquelure is beautifully fine and even, and the recent restoration has carefully and discreetly retouched any cracks or joints. One line of a retouched crack runs across the wooded countryside beyond the church tower to the end of the trees. Another joint crosses lower down to just beneath the castle on the right. The foliage of the tree in the upper right sky has been lightly strengthened, as have the birds. The main central body of trees surrounding the village are in largely beautiful condition, with occasional thinner patches, but most of the village itself is finely intact, with a few touches in a roof or a patch on the wall of the cottage to the right, but essentially the whole central scene is beautifully preserved, with the calligraphic brushwork and fine detail of the figures beautifully strong and unworn. A few surface touches can be seen occasionally such as on the dark jacket of the dancing man by the foot of the may pole, with several strengthening touches on the barrel and the drinkers in the lower right corner. There are a few strengthening touches down the trunk of the tree by the left edge, and slightly reinforced dark outlines along the transitions from the foreground to middle distance, with the water of the river around the bathers also a little strengthened. The beautiful overall condition suggests the painting was well preserved throughout a stable early history, and the technical virtuosity of the brushwork is finely intact. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Catalogue Note

La Danse autour de l'Arbre de Mai est peut-être le tableau dans lequel la personnalité de Pierre le Jeune s'exprime le plus clairement.

Thus wrote Georges Marlier, the doyen of Pieter Brueghel studies, of this ambitious composition.1 Unlike the majority of Brueghel's œuvre, it is a composition of his own invention and thus one in which he could fully express his own style, distancing himself from the ghost of his father. Gone are the often rigid figures of Bruegel the elder, replaced by a host of twisting forms in contraposto, arms and legs raised in time with the music, skirts and coats flapping in the wind. Each corner of the composition is filled with action; behind the central figure group dancing around the maypole are smaller groups of dancers, drunken boors falling out of the inn, the obligatory fool pursued by children, and four grown, presumably inebriated, men commencing a sword fight, one restrained by his wife while those of the others rush to intercede. Beyond them, where a mediaeval walled town rises from the banks of a wide river meandering its way down from the distant mountain, is the only part of the composition borrowed from the elder Bruegel, specifically from his Preaching of St John the Baptist, a composition which, as a whole, Brueghel copied on numerous occasions.2

Ertz lists only eight or nine autograph versions of this composition while Marlier was aware of only six.3 Of the six that Marlier knew in 1969, not one was dated, but in 1991 a 1626-dated version came to light on the Paris art market, lending a certain amount of credence to his view, based on stylistic grounds, that all the versions were created in circa 1620-25. More latterly a version dated 1627 has appeared, which was known only to Ertz via Marlier's citation.4

Provenance
Charles de Pauw (1920-1984), who owned this painting towards the end of his life, amassed what must be one of the largest collections of paintings by the Brueghel family, and in particular by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, ever put together. At the landmark sale of his collection at Sotheby's in 1986, no less than sixteen works by Pieter Brueghel were sold, amongst them the present work which made the second highest price after A Peasant Wedding Feast. Only one was unsold.


1. G. Marlier, Pierre Brueghel le Jeune, Brussels 1969, p. 401.
2. Budapest, Svépmüvészeti Museum; see P. and F. Roberts-Jones, Pierre Bruegel l'Ancien, Paris 1997, reproduced pp. 252-3, fig. 284.
3. See Ertz, op. cit., pp. 905-07, cat. nos. E1226 - E1231a; and Marlier, op. cit., p. 403.
4. Sold New York, Sotheby's, 29 January 2009, lot 43.