Name: JAN BRUEGHEL THE ELDER (BRUSSELS 1568-1625 ANTWERP)
Brand: A wooded landscape with hunters and deer
Price: 45000.00 GBP
Availability: SoldOut

JAN BRUEGHEL THE ELDER (BRUSSELS 1568-1625 ANTWERP)
A wooded landscape with hunters and deer
oil on copper
5³⁄₄ x 7¹⁄₄ in. (14.6 x 18.4 cm.)

Anonymous sale; Galerie Koller, Zurich, 20 March 1998, lot 31, where acquired by Alice and Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

A. Wied, in Pieter Breughel d.J.-Jan Brueghel d.Ä., Flämische Malerei um 1600: Tradition und Fortschritt, exhibition catalogue, Essen and Vienna, 1997, p. 495, under no. 186, as 'probably autograph'.
K. Ertz and C. Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625): kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, Lingen, 2008, pp. 202-203, no. 81, illustrated.

This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.
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Lot Essay

This verdant scene is an early work by Jan Brueghel the Elder, probably painted just after a group of landscapes the artist completed around 1593, during his stay in Italy. Like his other early forest scenes, the figures are likely inspired by the work of Jan’s father, Pieter Brueghel the Elder (circa 1526/30-1569).

As with most of Jan’s earliest works, the present is executed on copper, allowing the artist to render the elements with great precision. In particular, Ertz points to the delicacy of the birds in the branches and the clusters of leaves (op. cit., p. 202). The short, staccato brushwork in the foliage is typical of Jan's works from this period, which he would revise later in his work to be defined by longer brushstrokes. With the thick forest confining much of the activity to the foreground, the vantage point allows an intriguing glimpse deeper into the woodland; trees act as repoussoir devices to draw the viewer’s eye inward, where hunters chase down deer, and to a clearing beyond, where others flee, as if aware of the impending pursuit.