CIRCLE OF PIETER BRUEGHEL THE YOUNGER | Winter landscape with a bird trap

P. Fraiture, Les supports de peintures en bois dans les anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux de 1450 à 1650: analyses dendrochronologiques et archéologiques, doctoral diss., University of Liège 2007, vol. II, pp. 205–06;
C. Currie and D. Allart, The Brueg[H]el Phenomenon. Paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Younger with a Special Focus on Technique and Copying Practice, Brussels 2012, vol. II, p. 513, reproduced in colour pp. 514–15, figs 334a–d (as the work of an anonymous Antwerp artist).

The panel is formed of a single, uncradled, flat panel. The paint surface is relatively clean but the varnish is discoloured. There is some evidence of horizontal tenting along the wood grain down the left hand margin, in the centre of the sky, along parts of the right-hand margin, and in parts of the foreground lower left. There are three small associated paint losses on the left-hand margin. Inspection under ultraviolet light is impeded by what appears to be a masking varnish, making it difficult to see any restoration which may be in the sky, but the ultraviolet light otherwise reveals little to no intervention, save for one small retouching in one of the branches lower centre. In overall good condition, though the areas of tenting will need to be stabilised in the future. Offered in a gilt wood frame with some losses.
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Based ultimately on Pieter Bruegel the Elder's signed and dated painting of 1565,¹ this panel was executed by a contemporary of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, who appears to have been working outside the Younger's prolific workshop. Dendrochronological analysis undertaken in 2002 provides a terminus post quem of 1593 for the manufacture of the Baltic oak panel, and its likely usage date is probably around a decade later, when Pieter Brueghel the Younger himself was starting to make copies of his father's design.² Though a seemingly faithful reproduction of the Brueghel design, technical examination shows that the full underdrawing beneath the paint surface is more sketchy than one would expect from Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and omissions (such as the absence of birds flying in the centre of the sky) and individual motifs do not correspond with identical positions in the Younger's work. This version thus cannot have been based on the cartoon known to have been in use in the Brueghel workshop, but was more likely executed following one of the Younger's finished versions by eye.³

1 Oil on oak panel, 37 x 55.4 cm.; Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, inv. no. 8724; see Currie and Allart 2012, p. 485, reproduced in colour p. 484.
2 See Fraiture 2007, pp. 205-06.
3 See Currie and Allart 2012, pp. 484ff.