(Antwerp 1601–1678)
Huntsmen in an extensive landscape,
oil on canvas, 66 x 81.3 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Nevzorov Collection, Russia, since the 19th century;
Y. Vladimirovich Nevzorov (1913–2010)

We are grateful to Klaus Ertz for confirming the authenticity of the present painting. A certificate is available. We are also grateful to Tatiana Bushmina for her help in researching the provenance.

Ertz writest: „From the eye-level of the four figures depicted, the spectator overlooks a flat, tree-clustered meadow. In the right half of the composition, this plane extends in a continuous sweep into the depth from a slightly undulating, brownish foreground and over zone of low shrubbery in the middle ground to a distant line of trees on the horizon. A vertical framing element at the right margin is lacking, so that the space in the foreground can be imagined to extend endlessly towards the right. Behind the row of bushes on the right, the background is accompanied and ‘aligned’ by a wedge-shaped zone of trees, its pointed end protruding into the depth. The left half of the composition is entirely determined by a streamlet leading orthogonally into the background amidst trees, as well as a framing tree covering the entire height of the picture, its autumnal foliage in brown and yellow tones set off against the light-blue zone of the sky, which encloses this tranquil composition at the top. The landscape scenery provides the basis for a hunt, which according to the period around 1630 might have unfolded as follows: the hunt of the noble gentlemen, who in the present scene do not appear as protagonists (a rare and noteworthy exception), has come to an end. In the foreground, two male gamekeepers, recognisable by their attributes of a lance and a powder horn, meet with women, who were responsible for the feeding the hunting party. At the foot of the ‘autumnal oak’ on the left, one of the gamekeepers, wearing a yellow shirt, is depicted seated, his hat, held in his left hand, resting on his knee. His lance with its metal tip can be seen to his left leaning against a rock. In front of him appear four of Jan Brueghel’s characteristic dogs, modelled on Archduke Albrecht’s pack of hounds. The second gamekeeper, dressed in a green costume and holding his lance under his left arm, is shown to his right, presenting a piece of game, probably a shot hare, to a woman in a red skirt. Three further hounds from the archduke’s pack can be seen in front of the pair. Moved slightly further towards the back, a second sutler is shown sitting on the ground, holding a large beer jug in her lap. She rounds off this genre-like scene of ‘servants after the hunt’, the colours of her clothes providing a colourful accent compared to the overall tone of greens and browns […].

The painted oeuvre of Jan Brueghel the Younger, which at the beginning of his career was dependent on the work of his father, Jan Brueghel the Elder, can be divided into two large groups: his early work, which began before his journey to Italy around 1620 and which was continued after he had taken over his father’s studio in 1625 until it ended around the mid-1630s; and, on the other hand, his late work, which followed afterwards. In his early work, the son was entirely the keeper of his father’s legacy, in terms of both landscapes and flowers. Having been appointed dean of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1630, he slowly began to modify his painting style, first signs of which can be observed in the painting to be assessed here: the painterly brushwork, with the paint applied in loose streaks in the paths and the sky, betrays an artist who had already begun breaking away from his father’s style. However, the son masterfully knew how to combine old traditions with his own stylistic means and create something new. The colourful garments of the figures depicted, vibrantly set off against the dark forest background, are also typical of his art, as is the bright blue sky above, on the right-hand side, with a sun partly covered by clouds and treetops seeming to illuminate the figures in the foreground. Whereas Jan the Younger mostly painted on copper or panel until the early 1630s, he later increasingly switched to canvas as a support, which unlike the latter two did not impose any limits in terms of size.

Seventeenth-century landscape painting always also made references to the environment that was to be processed artistically. The generation of Jan Brueghel the Younger, whose members had been born after the turn of the century, was no longer directly involved in the development leading to modern landscape painting. The most essential achievements had already been accomplished, with fundamental experiences reflected in archetypical paintings. The path travelled from the fantastic world landscapes to the realistically rendered flat landscapes can exemplarily be traced in the work of the father, Jan Brueghel the Elder. Different from the father, the son’s ability to achieve a sense of painted drama seems to have been particularly great. The specialty of his later pictures lies less in these ‘holes of light’ in the sky, which are already familiar to us from paintings by Jan the Elder, but rather in these light reflections, which, in a way, seem to cause parts of the landscape to glow. Both the contrast created by the dark wooded foreground and middle ground and by which the sky is separated from the earth, and the brilliant colours of the huntsmen’s clothes as opposed to the dark zones of the terrain augment the impact of this effect.

Although in many cases specialised figure painters collaborated on Jan Brueghel the Younger’s compositions, in the present painting the four figures were clearly painted by him. The hounds typical of both Brueghels – father and son – can be encountered time and again in hunting scenes and mythological subjects featuring the goddess Diana and her nymphs. What speaks in favour of a period of execution in the 1630s are the colourful clothes, particularly the isolated use of blue and red, the basic brown and green tones of the landscape, the rendering of the trees, and the painterly brushwork, which can be seen in the paths, the tree trunks, and the sky. The ‘framing tree’ on the left is still reminiscent of early compositions by the hand of the father.”

Klaus Ertz dates the present painting into the period around 1630–35 and, in terms of composition, individual motifs, and colours, compares it to the following works by Jan Brueghel the Younger:

(1) Wooded Landscape with Horsemen, Maastricht, Bonnefantemnuseum, inv. no. 541, panel, 70.5 x 106.5 cm, datable into the 1630s, Literature: Ertz 1984, cat. 4, ft. 2

(2) Cattle in a Forest, Brussels, Collection Baron Coppée panel, 44.5 x 55 cm, datable into the 1630s, Literature: Ertz 1984, cat. 12, ill.

(3) Field Path, St. Petersburg, Hermitage, inv. no. 2246, panel, 48 x 67 cm, datable into the 1630s, Literature: Ertz 1984, cat. 23, ill.

(4) Sleeping Nymphs Watched by Satyrs, Amsterdam, Galerie Watermann, 1982, copper, 48.5 x 64 cm, collaborator: Jan van Boeckhorst, datable into the 1630s, Literature: Ertz 1984, cat. 242, ill.