(Antwerp 1587–1631)
Mountain landscape with travellers,
oil on copper, 43.5 x 67.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Bavaria;
sale, Neumeister, Munich, 6 July 2016, lot 372

We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for endorsing the attribution of the present painting to Marten Ryckaert. A written certificate (2016) is available.

We are also grateful to Francesca Cappelletti for independently confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs.

A pendant of the same size, Mountainous landscape with a clifftop castle and goats frolicking on the rocks, was sold at Sotheby’s, London, 5 July 2017, as lot 50.

Pijl writes: ‘This charming landscape is entirely executed in Marten Ryckaert’s characteristic manner. The rendering of the foliage, in which individual leaves are executed in a rhythmic pattern of green-yellowish paint, is especially typical for the master. The figures, with their colourful clothes, are also done in Ryckaert’s usual handling […]. Due to the stable copper support the painting has come down to us in pristine condition. All the highlights are well preserved and the thin layers of paint and the glazes, are also in mint condition. The lion share of Marten Ryckaert’s output is inspired by inventions by Paul Bril, and the Mountain landscape with travellers is no exception. The composition is based on Bril’s Landscape with St. Jerome in Aix-en-Provence, which is signed and dated 1609 (see J. Foucart, Le Siècle de Rubens dans les collections publiques françaises, Paris 1977/78, p. 47, no. 11). In the present painting Ryckaert omitted the figure of St. Gerome and added a few travellers on horseback at the right.’