CIRCLE OF PAUL BRIL | Rugged river landscape with Tobias and the Angel

Acquis à la foire de Toulouse en novembre 1975

Rennes, 2012, n°26 (notice par Sarah Van Ooteghem)

Laid down. Hinged to the mount at the top with Japan paper tabs. Further tabs attached on the other three sides, to facilitate handling. Some abrasions and repaired tears towards edges. Was at some stage folded horizontally (prior to being laid down), and there is some abrasion across the remains of this fold mark. some other light surface dirt, but except where abraded, ink and wash generally good and strong. Sold unframed.
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The arrival of the Antwerp painter Paul Bril in Rome, in around 1582, was a defining moment in the history of landscape painting in Italy and beyond.  Bril’s elder brother, Matthijs, had already been working in Rome since 1575, and had won important commissions to paint frescoes at the Vatican and elsewhere, but following Matthijs’ early death in 1583, Paul Bril was the leading specialist painter of landscapes active in Rome and beyond, and for some three decades he and his studio were continuously active, painting landscape and pastoral frescoes in all the great palaces belonging to a succession of popes, princes and other nobility.  This was really the first time that landscape had played any significant role in Italian art, and Bril’s landscape style, which skilfully blended elements from the traditions not only of his native Flanders but also of Venice and other Italian artistic centres, proved immensely popular. 

The composition of this lively drawing can be compared with many of the frescoes that Bril and his team painted in Rome, particularly small scale works like the ones executed circa 1605-7 for Pope Paul V, in the Sala dei Pittori of the Vatican.¹ The style of the drawing is not, however, that of Bril, and this must in fact be a work by one of the many very able artists, both Italian and Northern, who passed through Bril’s studio during his long career.

Interestingly, Nicole Dacos wrote to Monsieur Adrien following the Rennes exhibition to propose an attribution to the young Ambroise Dubois, who did indeed pass through Rome before settling in France, but no compelling comparisons have yet been found to support this suggested attribution.

1.  C. Hendriks, Northern Landscapes on Roman Walls. The Frescoes of Matthijs and Paul Bril, Florence 2003, p. 169