(Antwerp 1587–1631)
A wooded river landscape with peasants and cattle, a village beyond,
signed with a monogram and dated lower left: 1629 MR,
oil on panel, 40.5 x 57 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, France, until 2013

The present panel, depicting lively peasant figures, a gently flowing river and wind-blown trees is characteristically charming view by the Antwerp landscapist Marten Ryckaert. Trained in the Flemish tradition, Ryckaert here employs the brilliant emerald greens in the landscape along with chalky blue tones in the sky and reflected in the surface of the river below that are redolent of the palette of Paul Bril. In the foreground the two villagers courting beside a cow herd driving his cattle forward into the picture space, recalls the compositions of Jan Brueghel the Elder, whilst the snaking path leading back to the rustic town architecture, neatly framed by serpentine foliage, completes a tour de force on the part of Ryckaert in marrying these diverse artistic antecedants.

Ryckaert was trained in the workshop of Tobias Verhaecht (1561–1631), who was also the first master of Peter Paul Rubens. Verhaecht, a mannerist landscape painter was active in Rome in 1590, where Paul Bril and his successful workshop were the centre of a circle of Flemish artists, and where the inspiration for elements of this present composition may have arisen. However, the briskly bubbling stream on the right of the composition, picked out with characteristic dotted white impasto, and the breaking waters around the posts in the river, along with the gay blue and scarlet costumes of several of the figures, are particular signatures of Ryckaert’s own imitable style, which so enlivened the popular landscape genre of his era.