(Antwerp 1601–1678)
A village brawl,
oil on canvas, 77 x 107 cm, framed

Provenance:
European Private collection, until 2018

We are grateful to Klaus Ertz for confirming the attribution of the present painting to Jan Brueghel II. He dates it into the 1630s. A written certificate (March 2019) is available.

With regard to the attribution of this unsigned painting, Ertz refers to the following versions of this composition by Jan Brueghel the Younger:

(1) Fighting Card Players (private collection, France, circa 1626, together with Abraham Govaerts);
(2) Peasants Fighting over Cards (private collection, Italy, circa 1640);
(3) Fight between Peasants during a Game of Cards (private collection, France, 1640s)

Ertz about the present painting and the compositions by Pieter Brueghel the Elder on which it is based: ‘The depiction of peasants fighting over cards, attacking each other in a blind rage while their relatives have a hard time preventing them from killing each other and thus averting a terrible outcome of the brawl, is one of the most popular themes in seventeenth-century Flemish painting. Around 1620, Lucas Vorsterman engraved the now-lost prototype, a drawing or painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder that possibly belonged to Peter Paul Rubens. The engraving’s Latin inscription reveals that there was a close connection between Pieter Breughel the Elder’s original and Jan Brueghel the Elder. It can therefore be assumed with almost absolute certainty that the original painting on which the known works by followers were based was owned by Jan Brueghel the Elder. Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s eldest son and Jan Brueghel the Elder’s brother, executed a substantial number of compositions dealing with the theme of a fight between card players
(I know eleven autograph and nine questionable works, as well as sixteen works that must be rejected), all of which rely on Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s original idea, but as are free variations of the theme may well be regarded as autonomous works. This also holds true for the present painting.

In the case of the copper engraving reproducing Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s prototype the viewer still looks down on the scene “a spectator from an elevated stage”, he or she seems to be directly involved in it in Jan Brueghel the Younger’s composition. Here the eye point is much lower, which rather complies with the compositional approach preferred in the seventeenth century. Details such as the arrangement of the houses, the frayed trees, the horse-drawn cart in the middle of the village road, and the extremely picturesque protagonists of the fight are typical of Jan Brueghel the Younger’s output from the 1630s.

Jan Brueghel the Younger’s development towards independence in landscape painting at the time, which in the handling of colour, more painterly and temperamental brushwork, and summary treatment detail had broken free from the father’s example, is already discernible to some degree in the present painting and suggests a date of execution during the 1630s. Such a date would also comply with the Flemish painter’s special practice and preference of revisiting successful compositions conceived by important role models and repeating them by varying them with his own stylistic means. In this, Jan Brueghel the Younger entirely followed the tradition of Flemish painters active in the circle of the great masters.’