Studio of Jan Brueghel the Younger

James Dalrymple-Horn-Elphinstone, 2nd Bt. (1805-1886), Logie Elphinstone, Aberdeenshire
Lord Glasgow, Kelburn Castle until sold Sotheby's, New York, 8 January 1981, lot 75 (as Attributed to Isaac van Oosten)

The picture is in good overall condition. The picture is painted on what appears to be a single bevelled panel with horizontal baton supports affixed to the reverse. The panel has a very slight bow. The paint surface is in very good overall condition with no apparent damage or loss of paint visible to the naked eye. The darker, more fugitive pigments are slightly thin as can be seen centre left and under a raking light there is evidence of an old well restored horizontal panel split lower centre traversing the stags head and there is some discoloured retouching in the sky upper left and the forest in the background lower left. Otherwise there is evidence of surface dirt and discoloured varnish. Examination order ultraviolet light confirms the aforementioned retouching and reveals further retouching to a horizontal split upper centre. There are some scattered cosmetic flecks of retoucing elsewhere. Otherwise the painting is in good ready to hang condition. Offered in a gilt wood and plaster frame in good overall condition.
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The compositon is based on a picture painted by Jan Brueghel the Younger, today in the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest (inv. no. 621)¹ which in turn was inspired by Jan Brueghel the Elder’s paintings of The Earthly Paradise with Noah’s Ark, painted circa 1613-15, a version of which is also in the museum in Budapest (Inv. no. 548).²

The range of exotic animals visible in the latter painting was likely inspired by Jan the Elder’s time at the Court of Archduke Albert VII of Austria (1559-1621), for whom he worked from 1608 until his death in 1625. The Archduke amassed a menagerie which gave Brueghel unprecedented knowledge of the animals depicted. Also the influence of his friend and part time collaborator Peter Paul Rubens can be seen in the configuration of the lions, the leopards and the horse, all of which are direct Rubensian quotations. The lions on the left relate in formation to the pair of lions in the lower right of Rubens' Daniel in the Lion’s Den (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.). The leopards on the right relate to Rubens' Leopards with a Satyr and Nymph (lost; copy, Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal) and the horse at the centre is derived from Rubens' equestrian portraits of the Duke of Lerma (Prado, Madrid) and Marchese Giancarlo Doria (Gallerie Nazionale Palazzo Spinola, Genoa).

Collaboration and quotation were common working methods in the Brueghel workshop, indicative of an innovative system of artistic production which came to characterise the artistic milieu of Antwerp in the seventeenth century. Drawing inspiration from The Earthly Paradise with Noah’s Ark, Jan Brueghel the Younger has repeated a number of his father’s motifs, conflating and reversing them to make the composition distinctively his own. In contrast to the Budapest picture, the horse’s pose has been reversed and he has conflated the groups of lions and leopards, combining the serpentine pose of the left most lion (but changing the lion into a leopard) with that of the left most down facing leopard, reversing it so that it mirrors the serpentine pose of its counterpart. In so doing, Breughel the Younger maintains the illustrious visual tradition established by his father, whilst demonstrating a forward thinking attitude towards workshop practise. A reduced version on copper, identical in conception to the present picture but without the figures of Adam and Eve in the middle ground was sold in these rooms as Studio of Jan Brueghel the Younger, 8 July 2010, lot 117.

1. See Klaus Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Altere, Cologne 1979, p. 247, reproduced fig. 320
2. Ibid, cat. no. 274, p. 603, reproduced p. 242, fig. 311