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Lot Essay
Joos de Momper received his initial training from his father, who as early as 1581 registered his son as a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, of which he himself was at the time the Dean. It has long been maintained that de Momper had gone to Italy in the 1580s, since Lodewijk Toeput, who was then active in Venice, was mentioned as his teacher in an inventory of 1624; that this hypothetical trip to Italy actually took place was substantiated in 1985 when the frescoes in the church of S Vitale in Rome, previously attributed to Paul Bril, were given to the young Joos. Certainly the influence of Bril's work, and to a degree that of Toeput, at that period is evident in much of his oeuvre.
De Momper is probably best known for his views of mountainous landscapes that earned the painter the sobriquet 'pictor montium' inscribed beneath his portrait in Van Dyck's Iconography (c. 1632-44). These normally follow the conventional colour scheme of late Mannerist landscape painting, with tones of brown used for foreground, green for the middle ground and blue for the background (as, for example, in the second of the present paintings); the artist's technique is characterized by rapid, flowing brushstrokes that sharply define the contours of the foreground. De Momper's pictures were already greatly valued during his lifetime; they were first mentioned in inventories from the early years of the seventeenth century and he was praised by Van Mander as early as 1604. His mountain landscapes were often depicted in contemporary cabinet pictures by Frans Francken II, Willem van Haecht and David Teniers II.
The present works are unusual in their upright format. Such works are not unknown, however, and afforded the artist an opportunity for particular drama in their compositions. Similar examples include those in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 6400) and the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (inv. no. 391). The former, which is particularly close stylistically, is dated by Klaus Ertz (Josse de Momper der Jüngere, Freren, 1986, p. 535, no. 237, fig. 307) to circa 1630, suggesting a similar date for the present works.
De Momper is probably best known for his views of mountainous landscapes that earned the painter the sobriquet 'pictor montium' inscribed beneath his portrait in Van Dyck's Iconography (c. 1632-44). These normally follow the conventional colour scheme of late Mannerist landscape painting, with tones of brown used for foreground, green for the middle ground and blue for the background (as, for example, in the second of the present paintings); the artist's technique is characterized by rapid, flowing brushstrokes that sharply define the contours of the foreground. De Momper's pictures were already greatly valued during his lifetime; they were first mentioned in inventories from the early years of the seventeenth century and he was praised by Van Mander as early as 1604. His mountain landscapes were often depicted in contemporary cabinet pictures by Frans Francken II, Willem van Haecht and David Teniers II.
The present works are unusual in their upright format. Such works are not unknown, however, and afforded the artist an opportunity for particular drama in their compositions. Similar examples include those in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 6400) and the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (inv. no. 391). The former, which is particularly close stylistically, is dated by Klaus Ertz (Josse de Momper der Jüngere, Freren, 1986, p. 535, no. 237, fig. 307) to circa 1630, suggesting a similar date for the present works.