PEETRE BOUT Brussels 1658(?) - 1719, and, ADRIAEN FRANS BOUDEWIJNS Brussels 1644-1711

The Dukes of Croÿ, Brussels, probably since the late 17th century and thence by descent to
Karl Rudolf, Duke of Croÿ (1859-1906), who married in 1888, Marie-Ludmilla Princess and Duchess of Arenberg (1870-1953), Chateâu de L'Hermitage, Condé sur L'Escaut, France until the First World War, and thereafter at Chateâu 'La Solitude', Brussels;
Thence by descent.

In paintings such as this, with their decorative subject matter and highly refined attention to detail, Bout (who was responsible for the figurative elements) was carrying on the tradition established at the beginning of the 17th century in Flanders by Jan Brueghel. His typically meticulous technique is well displayed in this unusually large and well preserved copper panel. Few such panels are signed and dated, and nearly all his dated works were made before 1700. Bout's collaboration with Boudewijns probably dates from the mid-1670s onwards and may have begun in Paris, where he spent some years before returning to his native Brussels.

From an early date the Croÿ family were linked by marriage to the Princely family of Arenberg, who were among the greatest patrons and collectors of art in the Southern Netherlands in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first member of the Arenberg family to create a picture gallery, for example, was Auguste, 6th Duke of Arenberg (1753-1833), whose collection was housed at the Arenberg Palace in Brussels, and which was particularly notable for its Dutch paintings, including, for example, Rembrandt's Tobias healing his father's blindness (1636, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) and Vermeer's Head of a young woman (1672-4, Metropolitan Museum, New York). The collections were further expanded by his nephew, Prosper-Louis, 7th Duke of Arenberg and Duke of Arschot (1785-1861) and his son Englebert-Auguste, 8th Duke of Arenberg (1824-75), from whose collections the marine by Gerrit Pompe, lot  147 in the morning session of this sale is descended.