(Antwerp 1578 - before 1627 Frankenthal)
An extensive village landscape with a canal,
oil on panel, 30 x 41 cm, framed

We are grateful to Ursula Härting for confirming the authorship. A written certificate, September 2016, accompanies the present lot.

The present painting is a characteristic work of the School of Frankenthal. It combines Flemish landscape elements with highly narrative genre details.
Anton Mirou is one of the painters who worked alongside Gillis van Coninxloo in the artists’ colony at Frankenthal in the Electorate Palatinate, Germany. Few details of his life are known. The date and location of his birth do not appear on any document. His parents, Hendrik Mirou, a pharmacist, and his first wife settled in Frankenthal in 1586. They were among the Calvinist emigrants who fled the Netherlands after 1562 in order to join Frederick III of the Palatinate. In 1602, Anton Mirou married Susanna Coninxloo, the daughter of Jasper Coninxloo. They apparently had no children. It is possible that he stayed for a time in Bad Schwalbach near Wiesbaden in the Taunus; such a sojourn is indicated by a drawing in the Munich prints gallery, an engraving made in 1620 by Matthäus Merian and twenty-six views of the site engraved after the work of Anton Mirou.