(Brussels 1568–1625 Antwerp) and (Antwerp 1564–1635)
An extensive wooded landscape with travellers on a path and the corn harvest in the foreground,
oil on panel, 69 x 107 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Jacques Ludwig Menke (1837–1912), Hannover;
his sale gallery Le Roy, Brussels, 1 June 1904, lot 13 (as Jan Brueghel I);
Collection of Hermann Renner (1863–1921), Hamburg;
his sale Antiquitätenhaus Wertheim, Berlin, 30 April 1930, lot 62 (as Joos de Momper and Jan Brueghel II);
Collection of Heinz Kisters (1912–1977), Kreuzlingen;
Private collection, Rhineland, Germany

Literature:
K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere, Cologne 1979, p. 624, no. 403, illustrated p. 477, fig. 577;
K. Ertz, Josse de Momper der Jüngere, Freren 1986, p. 553, no. 321, illustrated p. 225, fig. 244;
K. Ertz and C. Nitze Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, Lingen 2008–2010, p. 1550, no. 743, illustrated p. 1552

The present painting is a high-quality example of the collaboration between two of the most accomplished and prolific Flemish artists of their time. While Joos de Momper II was responsible for the superb, warm landscape, Jan Brueghel I staffed it with a perfectly balanced arrangement of people and animals. They each had a distinctive style and speciality that enabled them to produce an entirely new kind of artwork for the dynamic Antwerp market and beyond. Klaus Ertz, the author of the monographs on both artists, dates the present painting to 1610/20 and thus to the two artists’ later periods.

This unique painting is one of five harvest scenes listed by Ertz in de Momper’s oeuvre. He describes how de Momper’s characteristic utilisation of colour for depicting light is an essential feature of his style and can be particularly well observed in the present painting. Ertz writes: ‘The time of the harvest, of cutting the corn, would be noon or maybe early in the afternoon; the peasant has to wait for the dew of the night to dry. He has to bundle the sheaves and pile up the bales of hay before the humidness of the late afternoon arrives. The landscape painter has chosen the right moment here, namely noon. This gives the figure painter an opportunity to describe the most varied activities: scything, raking, binding, putting up the hay bales, bringing in the harvest on wagons, and, finally, the peasants’ rest.’

Ertz continues: ‘The sun is at its zenith, so that the light falls in almost vertically. The sky is distinctly golden at the centre of the composition, as a small part of the sun itself seems to be adumbrated. A sharp, bright light floods the landscape in the far distance and across the full breadth of the foreground. The figures by the hand of Jan Brueghel only cast short shadows, consistently bowing to what the landscapist has prescribed […]. And yet it is in these summer landscapes, with their still inconsistently placed light, which is quite beneficial to the landscape on which it shines’ (see Ertz 1986, in literature, pp. 226-228).

Typical for that time was the specialisation in a particular sub-area of painting and the cooperation with colleagues. The collaboration between Jan Brueghel and Peter Paul Rubens became famous. Jan was a master in the depiction of landscapes and details. Peter Paul Rubens took over the decoration of the figures. Besides Peter Paul Rubens, Jan also cooperated with the Antwerp painters Hendrik van Balen, Sebastiaen Vrancx, Joos de Momper II and many others. The collaboration between Jan Brueghel I and Joos de Momper II, however, was a particularly fruitful relationship. Indeed, the two artists worked together on more than eighty paintings over a period of almost thirty years, and after Jan’s death in 1625 was carried on by his son, Jan II. De Momper’s large, broadly painted villages and cityscapes provided atmospheric settings for Brueghel’s figures, while they, in turn, animated de Momper’s vast panoramas.