Paul Bril

Estimate

25,000 - 35,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Paul Bril
an extensive pastoral landscape, with shepherds and animals and travellers on a road
Pen and brown ink and gray ink and gray wash

Provenance

C.R. Rudolf, London, by 1955;
sale, London, Christie's, 8 July 1975, lot 96;
sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 21 and 22 November 1989, lot 15, purchased by the present owner

Exhibited

London etc., The Arts Council Gallery, Old Master Drawings from the Collection of C.R. Rudolf, 1962, no. 91

Literature

D. Burnett, 'The Drawings of Paul Bril', Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 1974, pp. 335-37, no. 73, fig. 47
L. Wood Ruby, Paul Bril, The Drawings, publ Brepols (Belgium), 1999, pp. 28, 100-101, cat. no. 55a, reproduced pl. 60, and under cat. no. 55

Catalogue Note

The composition is known also from a signed and dated drawing of 1606, now in Cambridge.¹ During Bril's long stay in Rome, his works became so popular that they were frequently copied, both by Northern artists visiting the Eternal City, and by native Italians. This has inevitably led to historical confusions regarding the attribution of Bril-like drawings, but these have now largely been resolved by Louisa Wood Ruby, whose recent catalogue raisonné of Bril's drawings succeeded in separating, for the first time, the core group of autograph drawings by the artist from the numerous copies by other hands.

Only in a very few cases did Dr. Wood Ruby accept as autograph more than one version of a composition, but she considers both the Cambridge drawing and the present work to be by Bril. In fact, the compositions are not totally identical. In the Cambridge drawing, a gibbet is conspicuously placed on the hill in the background (a motif that is absent from the present drawing), and there are other significant differences in the placement of the flocks and figures to the right, the topography of the farm buildings to the left, and the foreground staffage. Wood Ruby has noted that this is the only case known to her in which autograph versions of the same composition by Bril differ so significantly.

Five surviving drawings by Bril are dated 1606, more than are known from any other year. This may, of course, be entirely accidental, but the evidence is that this was a fruitful time for the artist. Inspired, perhaps, by the example of Annibale Carracci's newly-painted Aldobrandini Lunettes (1603-1605), Bril's work began at this time to take on a new breadth and naturalism, qualities which are both clearly evident in the present drawing.

1. Wood Ruby, op. cit., cat. no. 55