- 36
Pieter Brueghel the Younger
Description
- Pieter Brueghel the Younger
- The village lawyer's office
- signed and dated lower left: P. BREVGHEL. 1616
- oil on oak panel
Provenance
His deceased sale, London, Sotheby's, 30 June 1965, lot 101, for £2,200 to Beckland;
Private collection, Berlin, before 1989;
With Galerie d'Art St. Honoré, Paris, 1990, from whom acquired by the present owner.
Exhibited
Literature
K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere, Lingen 2000, vol. I, pp. 487, 501, cat. no. E490, reproduced p. 506, fig. 370.
Condition
"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."
Catalogue Note
Chronologically this is thus most likely Brueghel’s second attempt at the subject. Though the tracing method ensures that the overall design of all versions remains largely the same, Brueghel did tend to subtly alter tone and colour from one work to another; for example, where in this early large-scale version the patiently waiting gentleman at the extreme left wears a bright red chemise, in the later large-scale version from 1618 it is blue. The vast array of caricatured faces, however, does not change, though the three large-scale versions allow for a deeper study of each highly characterised physiognomy. The subject determines that almost the entire picture surface is covered by man or object, thus allowing Brueghel to experiment and delight in narrative incident as well as visual texture.
Though the subject has traditionally been called “Rent Day”, “Tax-Collector’s office” and “Payment of (the) tithes”, recent scholarship has identified it as a ramshackle village lawyer’s office.4 This identification is supported by documents from as early as 1627, when the inventory of Antoinette Wiael’s collection describes a panel painting by the younger Brueghel of “een franschen procureur” (a French lawyer).5 The gentleman seated behind the desk wears a traditional lawyer’s cap. His clerk is busy at a tiny desk behind the door. Peasants approach the lawyer with produce as payment for services rendered: a woman reaches down into a basket in the search for goods to hand to her husband to offer the lawyer; several other men wait nervously for the lawyer’s decision while another seems to be spying on the whole scene from the other side of a door left ajar. Thus the narrative, together with the caricature in execution, suggest that this is a satire on the venality of the legal profession. Indeed an engraving made after the composition was published in 1618 by Paulus Fürst for a pamphlet attacking the corruption of lawyers and the way they exercise power by twisting both fact and law.6 However, whether taken literally or ironically, there is no doubt that this most modern of compositions appealed as widely then as it is does today.
1. See Ertz, under Literature.
2. Ertz nos. E489 and E496. There is one other larger autograph panel, dated 1617, measuring 115 by 187 cm.. In 1937 it was in the Surati collection, Milan; see Ertz, op. cit., p. 502, no. E494, reproduced.
3. Ertz no. E491.
4. See. D. de Vos, Stedelijke Musea Brugge, Catalogus Schilderijen 15de en 16de eeuw, Bruges 1979, p. 95; and J. Folie, Pieter Brueghel de Jonge, exhibition catalogue (brochure), Maastricht 1993.
5. See de Vos, ibid.
6. See Ertz, ibid., p. 494, figs. 378 and 379. The pamphlet does not acknowledge Brueghel as the source of the composition.