Jan Brueghel the Elder

Anonymous sale, Paris, Drouot, 27 December 1944, lot 11;
Private collection, France;
Anonymous sale, Paris, Binoche et Godeau, 19 November 1993, lot 80 (as Jan Brueghel the Younger);
With Bob P. Haboldt, New York, 1995 (as Jan Brueghel the Elder);
Private Collection, The Netherlands;
Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Private Collector'), London, Sotheby's, 14 December 2000, lot 8.

New York, Bob P. Haboldt, Fifty Paintings by Old Masters, 1995, no. 12;
Essen, Villa Hügel; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere–Jan Breughel der Ältere, 26 August 1997–14 April 1998, no. 66;
Phoenix, Art Museum; Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; The Hague, Mauritshuis, Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Painting on Copper, 1575–1775, 19 December 1998–22 August 1999, under no.8.

K. Ertz, Breughel - Brueghel, exhibition catalogue, Lingen 1997, pp. 235–237, cat. no. 66, reproduced p. 236;
M.K. Komanecky, in Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on Copper, 1575–1775, exhibition catalogue, New York 1998, pp. 150–54, part of section 8, reproduced p. 154;
K. Ertz and C. Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, vol. I, Landschaften mit profanen Themen, Lingen 2008, pp. 150–52, cat. no. 49, reproduced p. 151, fig. 49.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Jan Brueghel the Elder. Receding Landscape, with Travellers, Horses and Carts. Signed at right base corner. This little painting on copper is in extraordinarily beautiful condition. The copper has only the faintest unevenness at the extreme outer edges, at the centre of the top and the base, where a nail seems to have pressed slightly at one time, as also perhaps in the outer corners. Under ultra violet light a few minor touches can be seen in these places at the extreme outer edges, with only one or two narrow little lines of surface retouching along the horizon to be found anywhere else at all. The varnish is recent with a careful recent restoration. The minute brushwork is immaculately preserved in its exquisite precision virtually throughout. The delicate detail of the woven wicker of the carts with their thin muslin veiling intricately described, perfectly intact, as is the finely judged recession of the distant carriages, with the sharp definition of the birds nearby and the foliage against the sky, rarely found as crisp and unworn. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"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."

This work on copper is an archetypal example of Jan Brueghel’s small landscape paintings, characterised by a myriad variety of forms and motifs and bright, intense colours, creating the jewel-like effect so prized in his œuvre. The subject and compositional scheme are typical of Jan Brueghel’s work in the second half of the first decade of the 17^th century. It was around this time that the artist executed a number of broadly similar paintings, in which a road with wagons and travellers recedes to the horizon of a low-lying panoramic landscape, often with figures resting by the margins of a wood in the foreground and a town visible in the distance.

These paintings may be considered Brueghel’s ‘pure’ landscapes, in the sense that the staffage does not serve to illustrate an allegorical, mythological or religious story, but is rather a natural part of, and enhancement to, the subject of the landscape itself. David Freedberg and Seymour Slive have both cautioned against the over-interpretation of seventeenth-century Northern landscapes, but it seems relevant to comment on the prominence of the skeleton of a horse in the foreground of the present work, a motif which appears in several of Brueghel’s paintings of this sort.¹ The juxtaposition of the skeleton with the live horses pulling wagons and carrying riders perhaps bears some significance with regard to seasonal themes, the passing of time, and life on the land. A number of other elements in the composition are repeated in Brueghel’s wider œuvre. The artist used his own drawing for the man in the left foreground holding a staff and his bag;² and the dog near this figure occurs in two other paintings, dated 1607, in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (inv. no. 1895) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 1974.293).³

Ertz considers the point of departure for Brueghel’s mature landscapes, such as this one, to be the Woodland Road in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (inv. no. 1880), dated 1605, which incorporates a secondary allée, or visual path.⁴ In the landscapes which follow, Brueghel begins to suppress this additional focal point in favour of a more realistic compositional type, giving greater emphasis to the central recession by expanding the road in the foreground and the sky and landscape in the background, to create a wide, open vista. The bird’s-eye-viewpoint which predominated in paintings of the sixteenth century is brought down to an only slightly elevated vantage point, bringing the viewer closer to the scene while maintaining a distance between the spectator and the subject.

Although the date inscribed on this work is no longer legible in its entirety, Ertz dates the present painting to circa 1610, placing it in the orbit of other comparable landscapes on copper, such as one formerly in a private collection, signed and dated 1611.⁵ The present work would appear to be the prototype for another picture, almost identical in every detail, sold in these Rooms, 21 April 2005, lot 7, which is now accepted by Ertz as autograph, also datable to around 1610.⁶

This painting exemplifies Brueghel’s extraordinary talent in depicting the illimitable space of seemingly endless vistas on a minute scale. This effect is achieved partly through his use of atmospheric perspective: the brownish-greens of the foreground develop into the richer greens and yellows of the middle-ground, which finally recede into the luminous blues and pale greens of the background. The impression of a kind of telescopic vision is also brought about by the attention to detail to both buildings and foliage in the far distance, which is no less precise than that accorded to the minutiae in the foreground.

The combination of atmospheric perspective and the rendering of infinitesimal detail is one that is substantially dependent on the use of copper as a support. Arguably the most important, talented and prolific European artist to have painted on copper, Brueghel’s significance in the field derives partly from his career-long fascination with using the material as a support. Over half of the artist’s extant œuvre is on copper, and almost half of those paintings depict landscapes. The beaten metal lends luminosity and stability to the colours, while its smoothness allows for miniaturist precision, ensuring that the application of paint does not settle down to a lower surface level, as it would in the weave of a canvas or the grain of a wood panel, but is engaged at once in the description of form. Brueghel is here able to demonstrate to full advantage his uncanny ability to control his brushstrokes on this tiny scale.

An anonymous copy after this painting was with Bier, Haarlem in 1966.⁷

1. For Freedberg’s study on contemporary viewers’ appreciation of seventeenth-century Northern landscapes, see D. Freedberg, Dutch landscape prints of the seventeenth century, London 1980, p. 23.

2. Chatsworth, Devonshire collection, inv. no. 676.

3. K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere, Cologne 1979, p. 584, cat. no. 158, reproduced p. 150, fig. 157; and p. 582, cat. no. 149, reproduced p. 68, fig. 40.

4. Cologne 1979, p. 576, cat. no. 112, reproduced p. 47, fig. 14.

5. See Ertz, Lingen 2008, under Literature, p. 154, cat. no. 51, reproduced in colour p. 155.

6. Lingen 2008, pp. 152–54, cat. no. 50, reproduced in colour p. 153.

7. See Ertz, Lingen 1997, under Literature, p. 235, under cat. no. 66, reproduced fig. 2, as by a follower of Jan Brueghel.