Joos de Momper Antwerp 1564 - 1635

This drawing is clearly from a series representing the seasons.  The tradition for cycles of representations of the months or the seasons has its origins in medieval manuscript illumination, but became particularly popular in Flemish art of the 16th century.  In the field of painting, it was Pieter Bruegel the Elder who elevated the subject to new levels, culminating in the monumental series of canvases of the seasons, painted in 1565, three of which are in Vienna and one in New York.  In 1565-8, Bruegel also made a celebrated set of four designs for prints representing the seasons, and not long after this (1580-81), Hans Bol executed the remarkable set of twelve circular drawings of the months, which were subsequently engraved by Adriaen Collaert (formerly in the Koenigs Collection, sold, New York, Sotheby's, 23 January 2001, lot 11).

Thematically, the most significant precedent for the present drawing is, however, another series of drawings executed by Hans Bol in 1570, in which each drawing represents two months, rather than one or three, as in the more familiar examples of such cycles.  (The drawings from that series for September and October, and July and August are in the Louvre, and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts respectively).  But in terms of composition, Momper has, of course, returned in this drawing to the example of Bruegel, and in particular the famous Birdtrap, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.  A broadly analogous painting by Momper of a winter landscape with a hunter is in the Galeria Caretto, Turin (see K. Ertz, Josse de Momper der Jüngere, Freren 1986, cat. 425, reproduced p. 238, fig. 261).

Although no other drawing is known from the same series as the present work, a complete set of twelve depictions of the months by Momper does survive, and is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (see K.G. Boon, Catalogue of the Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Rijksmuseum, Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, 2 vols., The Hague 1978, cat. nos. 361-372).  In the Rijksmuseum drawings, the personifications of the months are given Italianate settings, and on that basis and also the evidence of the costumes, Boon dates the drawings between 1590 and 1610.  Given the absence of any Italianate qualities in the present work, and also its clear Bruegelian spirit, it would appear to have been executed rather earlier, before Momper's departure for Italy in around 1581.