Sebastiaan Vrancx

Anonymous sale ("Sold by the Executors of a Deceased's Estate"), London, Christie's, 13 December 1996, lot 201, for £49,900.

"The following condition report has been provided by Henry Gentle, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The oak panel is stable as is the paint surface. There is restoration along the left hand edge and also in the sky covering slight thinness to the paint layer."
"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."

The composition derives from a lithograph, thought to be after a lost painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.¹  Several other versions of this subject by Vrancx are known, including one in a private collection in Madrid² and another that is lot 139 in this sale. The present work is in the same sense as the lithograph.

Prof. Dr. Joost Vander Auwera will publish the work in his forthcoming monograph on the artist.

1.  See David Teniers, Jan Brueghel y Los Gabinetes de Pinturas, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1992, p. 128, reproduced fig. 78b.
2.  Idem, pp. 126-29, reproduced.