(Antwerp 1601–1678)
Landscape with travellers on a country road,
oil on panel, 32 x 46 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Vienna;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 21 April 2010, lot 13;
European Private Collection

The present painting comes with a certificate from Dr. Klaus Ertz (2009).

Dr. Ertz has written on the condition of the present painting: “The colours are bright and brilliant and typical of the 1640s. The layers of glazes, placed on top of each other, particularly the ones in the figures and in the foliage of the trees give the peculiar impression of three-dimensionality typical of Flemish panel painting.” Dr. Ertz compares the present painting to the following works by Jan Brueghel II: (1) Street near a Forest (Prado, Madrid, late 1620s); (2) Landscape with Travellers and a Bittern Hunter (art market, Paris, late 1620s); (3) Vast Landscape with Travellers (ex Galerie St. Lucas, Vienna, before the 1640s); (4) Field Path (Hermitage, St. Petersburg, before the 1640s). With reference to the period of execution, Ertz writes: “Comparable examples suggest a date before 1640. Although the painting to be reviewed shows similarities in terms of composition and approach to the subject, I believe that the picture should be dated into the 1640s, due to the much more painterly brushwork and the reduction of detail. The path of independence chosen by Jan Brueghel the Younger in the mid-1630s has clearly already been taken in the present painting. It is solely the composition that is still reminiscent of his father’s art (see Jan Brueghel the Elder, Vast Landscape with a Covered Wagon and Travellers, with Richard Green, London, in 2007).”