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Lot Essay
Painted on an oak panel of typical Flemish, seventeenth-century construction, this composition is not to be found in any other example known to the cataloguer. It relates closely, however, to a number of compositions from the repertory of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (?c. 1525/30-1569) and his son and imitator Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564/5-1637/8). The overall layout of the composition, with a group of buildings behind a shallow foreground at the left, and a recession to a deeper vista on the right, is found in a number of kermesses and other scenes of outdoor village merriment. In his catalogue raisonné of the oeuvre of Pieter the Younger, Klaus Ertz devotes a separate section to those which are set outside an inn with the sign of the Swan (see Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere, Lingen, 2000, II, pp. 844-7, nos. 1179-89). The Swan was one amongst a number of popular generic names for roadside inns and village taverns in Northern Europe - many English public houses still bore this name in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - but it acquired something of an iconic status in Flemish painting due to its recurrence in the narrative world created by the Bruegels. A fine example of a Swan Inn by Pieter Brueghel, dated 1630 with the inscription 'IN DE SWANE', was sold at Christie's, London, 6 July 2006, lot 12 (£624,000).
Here the Swan Inn and the surrounding village landscape serve as the setting for a number of motifs used by the Bruegels in other compositions. The central element of a large wine cask, carried on wheels which are almost as tall as a man, and leaning forward on limbers to which a horse could be harnessed, recurs in reverse, complete with the man at the tap, in the celebrated Census in Bethlehem composition (Pieter the Elder's original is in Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique; see Ertz nos. 211-225 for versions by the Younger). The comical and moralizing motif of the wife leading her drunken husband home from the inn appears in several compositions, including most of the Swan Inn pictures by Pieter the Younger, as well as a winter landscape (with an inn and cask-on-wheels in the background) known in several versions (a fine example is in Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts; Ertz no. 1155). The Hapsburg arms next to the entrance indicate either a political allegiance or more likely some sort of official privilege, and are also an element in most of Pieter the Younger's Swann Inn pictures. The man relieving himself against a tree recalls the Bruegels' illustration of the proverb 'To piss at the Moon' (Ertz nos. 95-6; Christie's, London, 6 July 2010, lot 13, £361,250) and recurs in other paintings of the period, such as the Massacre of the Innocents by an unknown artist sold in these Rooms (4 May 2012, lot 14, £34,850). The figure looking down from the window is familiar from the Flemish Proverbs (Pieter the Elder's original is in Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; see Ertz nos. 1-24 for versions by the Younger). The sinuous tree in the foreground, with its dusting of snow, recalls those in some pictures by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and other Flemish landscapists of his circle, such as Jacob Grimmer (1525/6-1590).
Here the Swan Inn and the surrounding village landscape serve as the setting for a number of motifs used by the Bruegels in other compositions. The central element of a large wine cask, carried on wheels which are almost as tall as a man, and leaning forward on limbers to which a horse could be harnessed, recurs in reverse, complete with the man at the tap, in the celebrated Census in Bethlehem composition (Pieter the Elder's original is in Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique; see Ertz nos. 211-225 for versions by the Younger). The comical and moralizing motif of the wife leading her drunken husband home from the inn appears in several compositions, including most of the Swan Inn pictures by Pieter the Younger, as well as a winter landscape (with an inn and cask-on-wheels in the background) known in several versions (a fine example is in Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts; Ertz no. 1155). The Hapsburg arms next to the entrance indicate either a political allegiance or more likely some sort of official privilege, and are also an element in most of Pieter the Younger's Swann Inn pictures. The man relieving himself against a tree recalls the Bruegels' illustration of the proverb 'To piss at the Moon' (Ertz nos. 95-6; Christie's, London, 6 July 2010, lot 13, £361,250) and recurs in other paintings of the period, such as the Massacre of the Innocents by an unknown artist sold in these Rooms (4 May 2012, lot 14, £34,850). The figure looking down from the window is familiar from the Flemish Proverbs (Pieter the Elder's original is in Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; see Ertz nos. 1-24 for versions by the Younger). The sinuous tree in the foreground, with its dusting of snow, recalls those in some pictures by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and other Flemish landscapists of his circle, such as Jacob Grimmer (1525/6-1590).