Pieter Brueghel the Younger

Probably Baron de Blommaert collection;
Probably Zachary collection;¹
Churchill-Longman collection, before 1953;
Probably with Leonard Koetser, London, 1955, and certainly with him in 1958;
Acquired from the above by a private collector;
By whom anonymously sold ('The Property of a Gentleman'), London, Christie's, 12 December 1986, lot 4a;
Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Gentleman'), New York, Christie's, 3 June 1987, lot 102;
With Johnny van Haeften, London, 1988, no. 4;
With Galerie de Jonckheere, Paris, 1989, no. 7, from whom acquired by the present owner.

G. Marlier, Pierre Brueghel le Jeune, Brussels 1969, p. 57, no. 18 (see Literature note below);
K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere, Lingen 2000, vol. I, pp. 371, 376, no. E343, reproduced fig. 266 (detail) and p. 376.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a fine oak panel with two joints. The upper joint crosses the lower sky and is largely unmoved and intact with some narrow retouching from the trunk of the tree to the right edge. The lower joint is almost in the centre and has been reglued and retouched along its full length. There is a fairly recent cradle supporting the panel behind although there is no trace of movement within the wood or of raised paint or flaking whatsoever. Structurally the panel has always remained perfectly flat and secure. In fact the painting is in exceptionally immaculate condition virtually throughout. The rich, unworn flow of the brushwork has not only been preserved intact but has grown in depth and translucence over time. Clearly there has been only minimal intervention over the painting’s apparently peaceful history, and the panel work probably coincided with the one visible restoration when the lower joint and the right end of the upper joint were retouched, with one or two other minor places, probably towards the middle of the last century. The retouching along the joint crossing the shoulders of the central figures is wider than necessary and has slightly discoloured. In one or two places it has been corrected recently, also visible (rather darker) under ultra violet. There appears to be a few other superfluous earlier retouchings also discoloured in some of the drapery near the base, for instance at the base edge of the blue robe of the figure seen from the back in the central foreground, with a small patch in the brown dog looking out beside him whose master’s striped robe also has slightly blanched unnecessary surface retouched. There are one or two rare retouchings at the edges for instance in the tree trunk at the left edge with one at the base edge, but the rarity of any sign of restoration across the beautifully intact paint surface is remarkable. 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."

Of all Brueghel's treatments of this subject, and he painted at least fourteen others, this version would appear to best record their original appearance, given the extraordinary survival of, in particular, the azurite pigments which in all other versions known either first hand or in colour reproduction have at least partly oxidized. This painting thus allows us a unique glimpse of Brueghel's glittering interplay of the three primary colours that, with his own treatments of the composition, he galvanises from that of his father's original, replacing, for example, the cream coloured cape of the figure seated in the central foreground with one that is bright blue, and extending these stark azurite pigments into other items of clothing and headgear throughout the masses.  

The composition, with dozens of bodies pressed up against each other, was the perfect vehicle for Brueghel to experiment. Such is the diversity of the crowd that the painting becomes less a narrative on John the Baptist's act of preaching and more a fascinating study of the different classes, races and dispositions of the human race, as well as of the variety of inclinations of each protagonist's dress, the fascinating array of hats worn by the figures in the foreground being a case in point. In early seventeenth-century Flanders the subject would have been markedly less impactful than in 1566 when Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the artist's father, conceived it. His original has long been considered to be a comment on the religious debates that raged in the Low Countries at the time, the inspiration being the secret meetings and sermons attended en masse by Protestant reformers out in the countryside. The banning of such heathen activities as palm-reading is defied here by the figure dressed in black, kneeling, in the very centre of the composition. This figure has often been thought to be a portrait, either of the artist himself, the patron, or, as has been suggested, Thomas Armenteros, advisor to Margaret of Parma.

Of the fifteen versions that Ertz accepts as fully autograph, this is the smallest and the only one known that omits the figures standing behind the tree trunk to the left.²

THE PANEL
A clue to the likely dating of this painting is provided through dendrochronological analysis of the four horizontal oak boards that make up the support. All four boards originate from trees growing in the eastern Baltic; such oaks were slow-growing and straight grained, unlike their counterparts in Western Europe which were less suitable for use. Of the four boards the most recent measured heartwood ring dates to 1582 (for the lowermost board). Allowing for the minimum number of sapwood rings (eight, for Eastern Baltic boards), we can assume a felling date after circa 1590. Of greater significance is that one of the boards (the second from bottom) was most likely cut from the same tree as another board that provides the support for Pieter Brueghel's Census at Bethlehem in the Bonnefantemuseum, Maastricht.³  Though undated, Ertz has convincingly dated it prior to 1607, on the basis of a comparison with another 1607-dated version of the subject in the Liechtenstein Princely collections, Vaduz. Given that the panels would have undoubtedly been part of the same batch delivered to the Flemish panel-maker and that it is unlikely such large boards would have sat around unused for more than a few years at the most, we can surmise a possible date of execution for this painting in the first decade of the 17th century. Only three of the further fourteen autograph versions of the subject are dated: 1601 (Bonn, Rheinisches Landesmuseum); 1604 or 1609 (St. Petersburg, Hermitage); and 1620 (Berne, Ludwig collection, 1969).


LITERATURE
Ertz identifies this work with Marlier no. 18, despite Marlier's measurements of 75 by 112.5 cm. being considerably smaller than those of the present work. Marlier cites the painting as with Koetser in 1955 and the corresponding card in the Witt library for 1955 gives the same measurements as Marlier, though in inches (30 by 45 in.). Based on the black-and-white reproduction on the Witt library mount there do not, however, appear to be any differences at all when compared to the present work and, despite the uncorrelated measurements it still seems likely that Marlier no. 18, the picture with Koetser in 1955, and the present work are one and the same.⁴


1.  This and the provenance listed above, according to the present owner.
2.  Unless the Koetser 1955 and Koetser 1958 pictures are indeed different pictures, see above.
3.  K. Ertz, under literature, pp. 292 and 297, cat. no. E221, reproduced p. 234, fig. Ft.211.
4. The picture appears again in the Witt Library as with Koetser in 1958, this time with the same measurements as the present work.