Frans Francken the Younger

With Galerie Louis Manteau, Brussels;

Acquired through the above by Baron Coppée in July 1927;

Thence by descent.

Antwerp, Exposition international, coloniale, maritime d'art flamand: section d'art flamand ancien. I: peintures, dessins, tapisseries, June – September 1930, no. 151;

Tokyo, Tobu Museum of Art, The World of Bruegel. The Coppée Collection and Eleven International Museums, 29 March – 25 June 1995, no. F26.

F. -C. Legrand, Les peintres flamands de genre, XVII^e siècle, Paris and Brussels 1968, pp. 25, 38;

U. Härting, Studien für Kabinettbildmalerei des Frans Francken II, Hildesheim, Zurich and New York, 1983, no. A17;

A. Pippidi, ‘Essai d'un catalog de l'œuvre de Fr. Francken II’, in Revue romain d'histoire de l'art, Série des Beaux arts, XXII, 1985, p. 26;

U. Härting, Frans Francken der Jüngere 1581–1642. Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Freren 1989, p. 58, 122, 236, cat. no. 39, reproduced fig. 57;

S. Leclercq et al., La Collection Coppée, Liège 1991, pp. 146–49, reproduced;

M. Wilmotte, in the catalogue of the exhibition The World of Bruegel. The Coppée Collection and Eleven International Museums, Tokyo 1995, pp. 204–05, no. F26, reproduced.

The following condition report is provided by Hanish Dewar who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Structural Condition The panel has been cradled and this is ensuring a sound and secure structural support. Paint surface The paint surface has an even varnish layer and it is most encouraging to note that the fine details of the painting appear to be in tact and well preserved. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows traces of old varnish layers due to selective cleaning and this is most noticeable on and around the various jars and vessels in the lower left of the composition. The painting has clearly been sensitively cleaned in the past. Ultra-violet light also shows small scattered retouchings in the sky including two areas measuring approximately 1 cm in diameter, 1 x 2 cm, and a thin vertical line approximately 3 cm in length coming down from the upper horizontal framing edge. There is a thin line on the right shoulder of the most prominent standing soldier and other tiny spots of inpainting. There appear to be remarkably few retouchings on the main body of the composition. There may be other small retouchings beneath the old varnish layers which are not identifiable under ultra-violet light. Summary The painting would therefor appear to be in excellent and stable condition and no further work is required.
"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."

This panel can justly be considered among Francken's most impressive works. Its extraordinary state of preservation, with all its subtle and delicate glazes preserved intact, allows us to appreciate the true range of his talents as a painter and colourist, something which the prolific output of his workshop has rather unfairly tended to eclipse.

Francken has here combined two important episodes from the Biblical story of the Israelites' flight out of Egypt and their return to the Promised Land as recounted in the Book of Exodus. Here, having successfully crossed the Red Sea under the leadership of Moses, they watch while in the right distance the Pharoah and his armies are destroyed when God engulfs them in the waters. In the centre of the composition, some of the Hebrews gather around the coffin of the patriarch Joseph, which lies open on the ground. According to Genesis (50:25–26) Joseph, before his death, made his brothers swear that they would carry his bones out of Egypt to Canaan. In the Book of Exodus (13:19) Moses fulfilled this vow by taking Joseph's bones with him when the Israelites fled Egypt: 'And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you.' Joseph's bones were taken in his sarcophagus and by tradition were later interred in Schechem in Canaan. The pretty young women seated beside the tomb admiring jewelry and precious vessels are probably derived from  an earlier passage (Exodus, 12:35) in which '...the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and raiment'. While strictly speaking not a precise part of the Biblical text, the scene allowed Francken to indulge his considerable talents in the depiction of precious metals and materials, a favoured facet of many of his paintings, notwithstanding their subject.

The story of the Israelites' flight out of Egypt was clearly a preferred subject of Francken's, and Ursula Härting records at least six other occasions in which he returned to this particular scene of the Israelites after the Crossing of the Red Sea.¹ As she notes, the popularity of the subject may have been due to the fact that many in the southern Netherlands in the early seventeenth century regarded the story of the Israelites as analagous to their own struggle to protect their minority Catholic faith from the increasing menace of the rising Protestant Northern provinces.² The earliest of Francken's depictions of the subject is the panel painted in 1621 and now in the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, and the latest that of 1640 sold Paris, Palais Galleria 26 March 1974.³ The Coppée panel occupies a point mid-way between these two, and is surely his finest rendition of the subject. By comparison with the earlier panel in Hamburg, with its broader panorama and high key local colours, Francken has here brought the principal figures much closer to the spectator and rendered the whole in a much more unified tonal scheme. By this date, that is to say around 1630, Francken had abandoned the thick impasto of his earlier works for a fluid technique involving a build up of several layers of semi-transparent glazes of different colours. The Coppée panel represents this change perfectly: the varieties of metals, textiles and their textures all merge in harmony with each other and with the landscape as a whole.

 

 

 

 

1. See Härting, under Literature, 1989, pp. 236–39, cat. nos 38–44.

2. See, for example, S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, London 1987, pp. 110 ff. The Dutch provinces were equally quick to claim the Exodus experience as reflective of their own.

3. Härting, op. cit., 1989, pp. 236 and 238, nos 40 and 41, reproduced. The date on the latter is not distinct.