Joos de Momper Antwerp 1564 - 1635, and Jan Brueghel the Elder Brussels 1568 - 1625 Antwerp

bidding is closed

Description

Jan Brueghel the Elder
A mountainous landscape with travellers on a road in the foreground, a large lake below and beyond
oil on oak panel

Provenance

Van Loon family, Holland (their coat-of-arms on a wax seal attached to the reverse of the panel);
With Hallsborough Gallery, London, 1949;
Rudolf Giersch, Wuppertal;
With Galerie Böhler, Munich, 1962, from whom bought by the father of the present owner.

Literature

K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere, Cologne 1979, p. 624, cat. no. 402;
K. Ertz, Josse de Momper der Jüngere, Freren 1986, p. 471, cat. no. 55, reproduced (with figures by Jan Brueghel the Elder).

Catalogue Note

This is an excellent example of Joos de Momper's Mannerist landscape panoramas. As Klaus Ertz has shown¹, it is to be dated to the decade 1600-1610, together with several other pictures of broadly similar composition, all with staffage by Jan Brueghel the Elder.² In all of them Joos de Momper's use of colour to create atmospheric perspective may be appreciated: the foreground, usually a sparse upland slope is painted in browns and grey; the middle-ground, usually wooded foot-hills, are painted in pale green and yellow; the nearer distance, usually sun-lit, is in pale yellow mixed with blue, while the distant hills and mountains are in deeper hues of blue, caused, although Momper would have been unaware of this, by oxygen in the atmosphere.

In the foreground are figures and animals painted by Jan Brueghel the Elder. A party of travellers, including two laden mules, have just made the long ascent from the distant valley below, while a horseman waits for them to catch up, and a traveller on foot is seated resting by the side of the road. Both Momper and Brueghel would have made journeys like this over Alpine passes affording similar panoramic views on their way to and from Italy. Although Jan Brueghel had been back in Antwerp since 1596, Momper's collaboration with him did not begin in earnest until the first decade of the 17th century, the time of the present work.

1 See under Literature, 1986.
2 Idem, pp. 145-9, 470-3, nos. 53-61, reproduced, and in colour fig. 133.