(Antwerp 1601–1678)
A river landscape with ferries and sailing boats,
oil on copper, 24 x 35 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection, 2020;
where bought by the present owner

We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for confirming the attribution to Jan Brueghel the Younger. A written certificate, dated 22 November 2020, is available.

The present depiction of gayly costumed burghers departing an imaginary Flemish town by boat is a fine example of the work of Jan Brueghel the Younger. This characteristic format of a vibrant riverscape is painted on copper, lending it both a luminescent, jewel-like quality, and providing a stable medium for transport to the prominent far-off patrons of the Brueghel family, such as the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1595–1631). Jan Brueghel the Younger, like his father before him, spent a formative sojourn working in Italy. However, news of the elder Brueghel’s death in 1625 brought the errant son home to Antwerp to take over the family workshop. Pijl writes that the younger Jan ‘successfully sold the paintings made by his father and completed unfinished works in order to sell them.’

The present composition closely relates to a picture signed by Jan Brueghel the Elder and dated 1606, sold at Sotheby’s London, 7 July 2004, lot 28. Pijl notes that common to both works are ‘the broad river landscape receding diagonally into space (with) three small boats packed with people and another vessel to the right moving slowly in full sail’. Pijl adds that the younger Brueghel ‘worked strongly in his father’s highly detailed style, catering for the demand for these type of works’ before later developing a more personal manner, as evidenced by in the larger scale coppers of the Adam cycle begun for the French Royal Court in 1631. Pijl therefore suggests a date of execution for the present picture to around 1630.