Jan Brueghel the Younger Antwerp 1601 - 1678 and Hendrick van Balen Antwerp 1575 - 1632

Estella Katzenellenbogen (1886-1991), Los Angeles, by 1944;
Acquired by the present collector on the Paris art market, circa 1990.

The stable, flat panel is cradled to the reverse. The paint surface is secure, clean and in generally good condition, if a little thin in the darker green pigments. Inspection under UV light reveals old retouching work to the sky and darker green pigments as well as some other scattered retouchings and minor strengthenings elsewhere. Offered in a gilt wood and plaster frame in good condition.
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This appears to be a unique composition by Jan Brueghel the Younger and Hendrick van Balen, two artists who collaborated frequently with one another, especially on allegorical subjects such as this that required a specialist figure painter as well as a one skilled in the painting of landscape and a multitude of still-life elements. Dr. Klaus Ertz, whose certificate dated 8 February 1990 accompanies this lot, dates the painting to circa 1630, which is to say a few years prior to Van Balen's death in 1632. The painting manifests Brueghel's distancing of his style from that of his father, himself only recently deceased in 1626, and may be compared on stylistic grounds to several other collaborative works by the two painters, namely the Allegory of Earth in a private collection, dated by Ertz to 1628, and the Allegory of the Elements in the Baron Coppée collection, which he dates to circa 1630.¹ This dating concurs with the known production period (1615-37) of the panel maker Michiel Vrient, whose maker's mark is branded on the reverse of the panel.²

A label on the reverse suggests the painting was exhibited at the M.H. de Young Museum, but the exhibition, Flemish Paintings, though slated for the summer of 1945, never actually took place.

1. See K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Freren 1984, pp. 363-4, cat. no. 198, reproduced plate 39; and pp. 368-9, cat. no. 204, reproduced.  
2. For more information on Vrient see J. Wadum, 'The Antwerp brand on paintings on panel,'  in E. Hermens (ed.), Looking Through Paintings. The Study of Painting Techniques and Materials in Support of Art Historical Research. Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. XI, 1998, pp. 179-198.