A wooded village landscape with a herdswoman on a path and a horse and cart crossing a river

In spite of its apparent affinities with the work of Jan Brueghel the Younger, this picture has recently been confirmed by Dr. Klaus Ertz, on inspection of the original, as the only known variant of this composition by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, datable to 1616-30 and authentically signed in the lower left corner (certificate, dated 2 October 2006). While the rendering of the landscape is characteristic, the figure types, painted unequivocally in the style of Jan Brueghel the Elder, are virtually without precedent in Pieter's oeuvre. The two other versions of the subject that are known (in the Niedersächsische Landesgalerie, Hannover; and the Prado, Madrid) are both given by Ertz to Jan Brueghel the Younger, while a third related composition is attributed to Jan Brueghel the Younger and Josse de Momper (see K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Jüngere, Freren, 1986, II, no. 380, fig. 497). As Ertz remarks, all these versions are likely to have been inspired by a prototype by Jan Brueghel the Elder, that is now presumed to be lost, although certain similarities can be seen in the depiction of the horse-drawn cart and the cattle in a picture by Jan Breughel I, formerly with David Koetser, Zurich (see K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere, Cologne, 1979, p. 596, no. 232, fig. 165).

The rendering of the landscape in the present work can be compared closely to several other pure landscapes by the artist, for instance, the Village scene with a drunkard, dated 1632, in a private collection, Vienna, and the Village scene with a picnic, in the Narodni Galerie, Prague (K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere, Lingen, 2000, nos. 1122 and 1102). Like the latter, a terminus ante quem of 1616 can be established for the present work by virtue of the configuration of the signature, given that the artist only signed 'Breughel' rather than 'Brueghel' after that date.