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Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Signed and dated (lower left): BRVEGHEL 1607·

Gallery LabelAlthough Jan Brueghel was born shortly before the death of his famous father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, he may be considered the latter's immediate successor as a landscape painter. This panel is one of the earliest works in which the artist moves away from mannerist landscape conventions towards a more panoramic view.

NotesSee Paintings Department archives for drawings of the red wax seals on the back of this panel.

Klaus Ertz [see Ref. 1979] cites "five autograph replicas" of the Museum's painting. This description certainly applies to the smaller painting on copper in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, and to the panel of nearly identical size in a Belgian private collection. The version of the same size said to be in a private collection in Florence is possibly by Brueghel. Two versions of an identical landscape with travelers attacked by highwaymen are evidently variations by Brueghel and Vrancx made about the same date. Ertz also lists two pictures (in Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, and Museum Narodowe, Warsaw) that he loosely describes as variants by other artists. The version in the Prado, Madrid, mentioned by Horst Gerson [see Ref. 1960] is not cited and is presumably rejected by Ertz. The same landscape and the central motif of a wagon with three horses and a rider are found in a drawing dated on the verso December 3, 1607, that was sold in Leipzig in 1930. This is probably a preparatory sketch for the Museum's picture. The old man with a sack in the right foreground occurs in a sheet of drawings of peasants, at Chatsworth. Another drawing, probably after the Museum's picture, is in the Uffizi, Florence. A painting on copper, signed and dated 1607, in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, is very similar in composition, although not quite close enough to be described as a variant of the Museum's picture.

Provenance?Duc de Berry, Palais de l'Elysée, Paris (until 1837; his sale, Paillet, Paris, April 4–6, 1837, no. 95, as "Vue extérieure d'un village de la Flandre," wood, 18 x 30 pouces [approx. 19 x 32 in.], for Fr 710); the Earls of Warwick, Warwick Castle (by 1903–28); Charles Guy Fulke Greville, 7th Earl of Warwick, Warwick Castle (1928–74); [Edward Speelman, London, 1974; sold to MMA]

Exhibition History

Art Gallery of the Corporation of London. "Works by Early and Modern Painters of the Dutch School," April 28–July 25, 1903, no. 147.

Bruges. Musée Communal Groeninge. "L'Art flamand dans les collections britanniques et la Galerie Nationale de Victoria," August–September 1956, no. 56.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Patterns of Collecting: Selected Acquisitions, 1965–1975," December 6, 1975–March 23, 1976, unnumbered cat.

References

M. P[ierre]. Defer. Catalogue général des ventes publiques de tableaux et estampes depuis 1737 jusqu'à nos jours. part 2, 2, Paris, 1868, p. 149, no. 30.

L'Art flamand dans les collections britanniques et la Galerie Nationale de Victoria. Exh. cat., Musée Communal Groeninge, Bruges. Brussels, 1956, p. 47, no. 56, pl. 43.

F. Grossmann. "Flemish Paintings at Bruges." Burlington Magazine 99 (January 1957), p. 5.

H[orst]. Gerson and E. H. ter Kuile. Art and Architecture in Belgium 1600 to 1800. Baltimore, [1960], pp. 59, 181 n. 24, pl. 46B.

Matthias Winner. "Zeichnungen des älteren Jan Brueghel." Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 3 (1961), p. 218.

Matías Díaz Padrón. "I—Escuela flamenca: Siglo XVII." Museo del Prado: Catálogo de Pinturas. Madrid, 1975, vol. 1, p. 58, under no. 1885.

Matthias Winner in Pieter Brueghel d. Ä. als Zeichner, Herkunft und Nachfolge. Exh. cat., Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Berlin, 1975, under no. 121.

European Drawings from the Fitzwilliam. Exh. cat.[Washington], 1976, p. 39, under no. 62.

Didier Bodart. Rubens e la pittura fiamminga del Seicento nelle collezioni pubbliche fiorentine. Exh. cat., Palazzo Pitti. Florence, 1977, p. 92, under no. 22.

Fritz Baumgart. Blumen Brueghel. Cologne, 1978, p. 52.

Klaus Ertz. Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625): die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog. Cologne, 1979, pp. 68–69, 85, 88, 149, 150–51, 582, 584, no. 149, figs. 40, 72, 79.

Howard Hibbard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980, pp. 298, 305, fig. 534 (color).

Walter A. Liedtke. Flemish Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1984, vol. 1, pp. 16–18; vol. 2, colorpl. II, pls. 8–9 (overall and detail).

Walter A. Liedtke. "Flemish Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum—II: Van Dyck, Jordaens, Brouwer, and Others." Tableau 6 (February 15, 1984), pp. 31, 34, fig. 14.

F. Hamilton Hazlehurst. "A New Source for Rubens's 'Château de Steen'." Burlington Magazine 129 (September 1987), p. 588, fig. 26.

Introduction by Walter A. Liedtke in Flemish Paintings in America: A Survey of Early Netherlandish and Flemish Paintings in the Public Collections of North America. Antwerp, 1992, pp. 27, 152–53, no. 45, ill. (color).

Peter C. Sutton. The Age of Rubens. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Boston, 1993, pp. 461–62, fig. 2.

Larry Silver. Peasant Scenes and Landscapes: The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market. Philadelphia, 2006, p. 202, fig. 9.14.

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