Even though it was engraved (in reverse) as early as 1618, the original title of this subject is not certain, and it is variously described these days as ‘The tax collector’s office’, ‘The payment of tithes’ or ‘The peasant lawyer’. There is some evidence from inventories of collections in 17th-century Antwerp that the latter is correct – for example, the 1627 inventory of Antoinette Wiael’s collection refers to a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger as ‘a French lawyer’ (‘een franschen procureur’), and in some versions the principal figure is seated before a calendar inscribed ‘ALMANACH DE GRACE … DE DIEU…’, which does suggest that the lawyer – if that is what he is – may be French.¹ He is visited by peasants bearing offerings as payments, so he may indeed be collecting tithes or taxes. One has the abiding sense that the composition is pregnant with irony and may have a satirical purpose, an impression enhanced by the caricatural figures - one is of course hardly surprised to find mockery in a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger.

The composition, and probably also the subject, is one of Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s own devising. Unlike much of the Younger Brueghel’s output, most of the autograph versions were produced on panels of a single standard size so the design could be replicated using a cartoon traced onto the panel, although there are two paintings dated 1615 and 1616 which are on panels of Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s large standard size of circa 75 x 124 cm. The first of these is the earliest dated version, and there are some twenty dated versions in all, of which the latest is 1622, so it would appear that the subject enjoyed considerable popularity in a short period of time.

While all the autograph versions are very similar in composition, there are small variations that form different types. One type, to which this painting belongs, includes a cloth hanging below the window, and three labels attached to packets above the head of the standing figure to the right, among other characteristics. The most distinctive feature of this type is that the standing figure to the left wears a red jacket with red sleeves, whereas in others he is in grey. This type first appears in a painting of 1616 in large format, and of 1617 in the present smaller format. This particularly painterly picture, which has been in a family collection for over a century and has not been seen in public for a long time, if ever, is unusually well-preserved and freely painted, with rich impasto throughout.

The panel comprises an unusually large single board of North-Western European oak from an unusually fast-growing tree, of which the latest heartwood ring is from 1601.² Allowing for sapwood growth the earliest plausible date of use is from after 1609, but a more likely date of use is from circa 1615 until circa 1630, which is consistent with the likely date of the painting. A Judgement of Paris attributed to the workshop of Rubens (sold in these Rooms, 29 July 2020, lot 116) is on a board which appears to have been cut from the same tree. Infra-red imaging reveals the characteristic under-drawing traced from a presumed cartoon which was Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s standard workshop practice.

Klaus Ertz included this work in his Pieter Brueghel the Younger catalogue raisonné as F (= Fraglich), but he was only aware of its existence from Jacqueline Folie (who had earlier edited Marlier’s Pieter Brueghel the Younger catalogue raisonné), who saw it in 1992 in Brussels (‘Alle Infos von J. Folie’). Ertz had no access to the painting nor had he seen a photograph of it.

The Csetényi collection

József Csetényi (1875–1956) was a Hungarian political and economic journalist, from 1913 economic editor of the Pesti Hirlap. He married Erzsébet Frisch (1890–1981) in Budapest in 1910 and they lived in the same house in Budapest from 1923 to 1946. In 1935 they commissioned photographs of themselves and the interior of their house with their art collection to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary (figs 1–2). In one of these the present Pieter Brueghel the Younger can be seen, along with the Jan Breughel the Younger landscape included in the 8 December sale. To judge from the photographs, their collecting tastes showed a predilection for Flemish 17th-century paintings, Dutch 17th-century still lifes and 18th-century flower pictures, but their collection also included Dutch landscapes and Italian pictures, and Csetényi is known to have collected Austrian 19th-century paintings and Oriental art.³

The Csetényis gave their collection to their daughter Suzanne, who took the paintings with her when she emigrated to Brussels in 1948. Fig. 3 shows her and her husband in their Brussels apartment at Christmas 1954, with the present picture behind them. József Csetényi died in Budapest on 6 August 1956. His widow subsequently moved to Brussels and died there on 11 December 1981.

¹ See P. van den Brink, Brueghel Enterprises, exh. cat., Ghent and Amsterdam 2001, pp. 173–74.

² Dendrochronological analysis carried out by Ian Tyers (Consultancy Report 1418, November 2022), available on request.

³ According to P. Ujvari, Le Lexique juif hongrois, 1929, cited in T.P. Nagy: Database of the 1929 Hungarian Jewish Lexicon. Sociological databases No. 1. WJLF, Budapest, 2013.