An extensive river landscape with travellers on a path

Jan Breughel I often repeated favourite motifs in his collaborations with de Momper so it is not surprising to note here that the elegant horseman on the grey, apparently offering money to a beggar, recurs in a Wide Landscape, in a German collection, and another in the Hornstein collection, Montreal (see K. Ertz, Josse de Momper der Jüngere, Freren, 1986, nos. 190 and 157 respectively); the same muleteer in the immediate foreground can be seen in a landscape formerly with the Galerie St. Honoré, Paris (ibid., no. 137). The large scale of the figures in the present canvas and the fairly broad handling of the landscape imply that this might be a fragment from one of de Momper's oversize landscapes with original dimensions more akin to the Hornstein picture (184 x 221 cm.).