Jan Brueghel II (Antwerp 1601-1678)
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Jan Brueghel II (Antwerp 1601-1678)

An extensive landscape with travellers passing a cottage and a miller on his way to a windmill, a town beyond

Details
Jan Brueghel II (Antwerp 1601-1678)
An extensive landscape with travellers passing a cottage and a miller on his way to a windmill, a town beyond
oil on panel
10 5/8 x 16½ in. (27 x 42 cm.)
Provenance
Anon. Sale, Christie's, London, 17 December 1982, lot 138 (sold £14,040).
with Sabin and Vanderkar, London, 1983.
Anon. Sale, Phillips, London, 14 December 1999, lot 41 (sold £128,000).
Private collection, Geneva.
Special notice
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

Sold with a photocopy of a certificate dated 14 January 2000 by Dr. Klaus Ertz confirming the attribution.

Born in Antwerp, the artist was the son of Jan Brueghel I, with whom Jan II trained, and whose influence pervaded his artistic career. After going to Italy in 1622, following the death of his father in 1625, he returned to become a member of the guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp.

It was frequent in his oeuvre for Jan II to repeat motifs invented by his father and for both their studios to continue this practice. Thus the basic composition of this landscape with the windmill on a mound on the left derives from that of Jan the Elder's Landscape with a mill in the Palazzo Spada, Rome. The red-shirted miller carrying a sack on his back trudging towards the mill on the left of the present panel reworks a similar figure (shown in reverse) in the Palazzo Spada picture. The same figure (in the same direction) reappears in Jan II's Landscape with travellers, formerly with Didier Aaron, Paris (see K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Jüngere, Freren, 1984, I, p. 202, no. 19, pl. 4).

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