(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
Peasants fighting over a game of cards,
oil on panel, 73.2 x 104.6 cm, framed

Provenance:
Scharpé family, Bruges;
Collection of Anton (Tony) Herbert-Scharpé (1902–1959), Courtrai;
Fernand Talpe (1898–1986), Courtrai;
his heirs;
sale, Christie’s, Amsterdam, 6 November 2000, lot 68 (as after Rubens);
where bought by the present owner
The present panel portraying a gaggle of peasants brawling over a game of cards is an outstanding example of Peter Paul Rubens’s workshop output, with brush strokes to the heads, faces and hands of the central figures executed by Rubens himself during the final phase of the picture’s production as a means of enlivening and enhancing the expressiveness of the work.

A Dendrochronological analysis of the oak support carried out by Andrea Seim has confirmed the youngest ring heartwood ring to date from 1606, allowing an earliest possible creation from 1612 onward. From its characteristics the panel shows close affinity with that used in Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s (1564–1638) Peasant Wedding Dance circa 1610–1620s (72 x 104 cm), Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. no. NM 2020).

Rubens depicts an expressive tussle between peasants; threshers whirling and fists flying, with playing cards scattered in the earth. An ale barrel closes off the left of the composition, while a discarded pitcher and over-turned trestle on the lower right characterise a scene of drunken excess of Brueghellian proportions. Indeed, the present Peasants fighting over a Game of Cards composition derives from a prototype by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (circa 1525/30–1569), which current scholarship holds to have been the painting formerly in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, which was lost in the Second World War (see fig. 1). Based on the description of it in a letter written in circa 1631 by Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel to merchant Lionel Wake in Antwerp, it is believed that the painting must have been Brueghel’s last painting which was left unfinished at his death in 1569 and subsequently completed by Gillis Mostaert (1528–1598). It was probably inherited by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), who is thought to have added the horse drawn carriage in the village in the background. Some time after Jan’s death the painting was acquired by Arundel and later sold in Amsterdam in 1655 at the sale of the estate of his widow Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel (1585–1654).

The present, as yet unpublished painting first appeared at a sale in Amsterdam in 2000 after having long lain hidden in a private collection in Belgium and has been studied in the original by experts at the Rubenianum. Technical aspects such as the streaky preparation of the panel in white and the expressive background which is typical of Jan Wildens (1586–1653), a landscape specialist employed by Rubens, have confirmed the work’s creation by Rubens’s workshop. Furthermore, strokes apparent in the yellowish retouching of the various hands and faces of the peasants is characteristic of Rubens’s own distinctive brushwork.

The popularity of this striking composition, with its large central grouping of tumbling figures and the vigour of the fight, is confirmed by the numerous copies made after it. As pointed out by K. Belkin (Rubens: copies and adaptations from renaissance and later artists: German and Netherlandish artists, in: Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, 2009, I, p. 190), these copies are to be divided into two groups, the first being the ones by and associated with Pieter Brueghel II (for which see K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere 1564–1637/8, die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, 1988/2000, II, cat. nos. 1054/88), and the second the ones with Rubenesque features, such as seen in the present painting.

Rubens’ interest in Brueghel’s composition is confirmed by the presence of a copy recorded in the inventory made up after his death in 1640 under no. 143: ‘Un Combat des paysans faict apres un dessein du vieux Breugel’. This is perhaps the sketch, oil on panel, 36,5 x 46 cm, formerly in the collection of Ludwig Burchard, London, which has recently emerged and is currently on loan to the Rubenshuis in Antwerp (K. Belkin, op.cit, 2009, cat. no. 90, fig. 258).

The present painting belongs to a small group of copies on medium cabinet format, executed in Rubens’s workshop, and which show significant changes in comparison to the prototype. These are an overall more dramatic figural style and a more expressive physiognomy enhanced by wilder hairstyles and broader legs and feet. Thus the man attacking with the flail has acquired a beard and a moustache, while the woman on the right is about to lose her veil while she tries to pull his pitchfork backwards. Of the man grabbing the wrist of the woman with the jug his left foot has been eliminated. All these features are also seen in the engraving (see fig. 2) in reverse by Lucas Vorsterman (K. Belkin, op.cit., 2009, fig. 256).

In the present composition Rubens further enhanced the expressiveness of the various peasants by retouching the face and hand of the old woman with the pitcher, the head, face and hand of the man next to her, the face and hair of the man with the flail and the face and hand of the woman on the right in a light yellowish color. Such interventions by the master himself have also been observed in the painting now in a Swiss private collection, which is tentatively attributed to Jan Breughel I (oil on panel, 94 x 124 cm, see K. Belkin, op.cit., 2009, cat. no. 91, fig. 259).

Of the painting which was formerly in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin and of which the present whereabouts are unknown, the retouching by Rubens seem to have been removed during a restoration campaign and thus now lost (oil on panel, 74.5 x 105.5 cm, see K. Belkin, op.cit., 2009, cat. no. 92, figs. 260/1).

Retouching by the master himself in the final stages was common practice in the workshop of Rubens. These brushstrokes by Rubens were meant to imbue expressive and virtuoso touches to the finished picture. However, in the present painting, the retouching exhibits not only Rubens’s ever playful and competitive intention to ‘improve’ on the works of his celebrated predecessors but also his free and innovative brilliance in doing so. Similarly, Rubens also reinterpreted compositions by Brueghel’s contemporary Maerten van Cleve (circa 1527–1581). Whether the present composition was hung in grand Antwerp mansions, such as Rubens’s own, with the intent to imbue a moralising sub-text on the dangers of drink and gambling, or merely as a humorous talking point, the present work remains a unique testament, both to Rubens’s personal taste as a collector, but also to his brilliance in refining, and repurposing the artistic motifs of a previous generation.

Please see the print catalogue for support illustrations.