(Antwerp 1573–1647)
An autumnal market scene in a village,
signed with monogram lower left: SV (ligated),
oil on panel, 51.4 x 66.4 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 5 April 1990, lot 106;
where purchased by the present owner

In the early 1620s, when the present painting was made, Vrancx numbered among Antwerp’s most prominent artists. Like Rubens, he was a member of the Brotherhood of Saints Peter and Paul and in 1612/13 was elected dean of the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp. Vrancx was known for his battle scenes and landscapes, but among the most popular subjects conceived by him were allegorical representations of the months and seasons. The present painting shows Vrancx at the climax of his maturity. The landscape, architecture, and figures are clearly defined and convincingly incorporated into the composition. The market is held in a village road dominated by a tall tower that is based on the Torre delle Milizie in Rome and was meant as a memento of Vrancx’s stay in Italy between 1595 and 1601. Like other painters, Vrancx, too, relied on a repertoire of motifs to which he referred for individual pictorial elements. For example, the bearded man buying birds also appears in a smaller Allegory of Autumn, which was sold at Sotheby’s, London, on 12 December 2002 as lot 11. Vrancx managed to vary the theme of the seasons over and over again, as is attested to by a personification of autumn in the form of a male figure that is surrounded by the fruit of autumn and shown sitting at the edge of a field (Sotheby’s, London, 9 December 2009, lot 7). This constant reinvention of familiar motifs is proof of the painter’s prodigious imagination and creativity.