Marten van Cleve the Elder

With Robert Finck, Brussels, by 1965;

From whom acquired by the father of the present owners in late 1965 or January 1966.

Brussels, Galerie Robert Finck, Exposition de tableaux des maîtres flamands du XV^e au XVII^e siècle, 26 November – 12 December 1965, no. 16.

G. Marlier, Pierre Brueghel le Jeune, Brussels 1969, p. 349, fig. 215 (as an important work by Marten van Cleve);

H.-J. Raupp, Bauensatiren. Enstehung und Entwicklung des bäuerlichen Genres in der deutschen und niederländischen Kunst ca. 1470–1570, Niederzier 1986, p. 260, reproduced fig. 249;

K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel d.J. (1564–1647/38). Die Gemälde mit kritischem Œuvrekatalog, Lingen 2000, vol. II, pp. 682, 733, cat. A 992, reproduced p. 682, fig. 557 (also possibly identical with p. 735, no. A 1008, reproduced; as not by [Abgeschriebung] Pieter Brueghel the Younger, but hard to judge from a photograph);

K. Ertz and C. Nitze-Ertz, Marten van Cleve 1524–1581, Lingen 2014, pp. 65, 195, cat. no. 127, reproduced (as Marten van Cleve).

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Marten van Cleve the Elder. An Outdoor Wedding Dance. This painting is on an oak panel with two main joints. It has been cradled probably early in the last century, with two small extra strips added more recently to support in particular the top right and the top left of the uppermost section, where quite strong cracks have developed. The original cradle has double supporting bars behind only the upper joint, with the evidently more stable lower joint having just a brief narrow line of retouching at the left end for about 10 or 15cm, with the remainder of the joint never having moved. The figures are in exceptionally good condition almost throughout and the lovely middle and far distance is also beautifully intact and unworn. As tends frequently to be the case the ground between the figures, which was most lightly painted, was most vulnerable and has been worn in many places. Where slightly more vigorous denser paint was used that has remained intact, but elsewhere much of the immediate foreground and the interstices between the figures up into the middle distance appears to have been patchily worn and then retouched. Occasionally this has affected the figures as well, as for instance in the further arm of the man in the central pair of dancers. The drawing can just be seen in places through the translucent brushwork of the lighter areas of some figures. The skirt of the woman on the right appears to have had some decorative but impermanent pigment in the design. Another dancer on the left has a scattering of little darkened retouchings in her purple drapery. In the distance a possible pentiment can be seen in the central tree against the sky, which was once clearly wider. The exceptionally fine condition enables many of the vivid characters across the painting to be described in rare sweeps of intact brushwork, including minute vignettes of infants caught in a moment in a distant corner. 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."

The likely prime version of this composition, a beautifully preserved work by Marten van Cleve, only came to light earlier this year when it was sold at Sotheby's in London on 6 July 2016 for £880,000 (see fig. 1). The present painting was noted in the sale catalogue entry as one of the two other known autograph versions, of which the other was with Houthakker in Amsterdam in 1934 and is known from a poor photograph; there remains a possibility that the latter two are one and the same painting.

The inspiration for the composition derives from two principal sources: Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Wedding Dance, dated 1566, now in the Detroit Institute of Arts (inv. 30.374), and an engraving by Pieter van der Heyden after a design by Bruegel the Elder, which Van Cleve himself interpreted in a wonderfully free and unselfconscious drawing. Infra-red imaging of the present picture (see fig. 1) reveals a mixture of probably traced outlines with more freely-drawn working-up of figures, especially those around and near the table to the left, as well as some architectural elements. 

The work of Marten van Cleve seems to have been the principal painted medium via which the designs and pictorial ideas of Pieter Bruegel the Elder were transmitted to Pieter Brueghel the Younger, who was an infant when his father died, and whose earliest dated works emerge towards the end of the 16th century.