Pieter Brueghel II (Brussels 1564/5-1637/8 Antwerp)
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Pieter Brueghel II (Brussels 1564/5-1637/8 Antwerp)

The Bird Trap

Details
Pieter Brueghel II (Brussels 1564/5-1637/8 Antwerp)
The Bird Trap
indistinctly signed '...RE[U?]G..' and with later signature and date (lower right)
oil on panel, the reverse stamped with the coat-of-arms of the city of Antwerp
14 7/8 x 22 1/8 in. (37.8 x 56.2 cm.)
Provenance
D. José d'Alava, Seville.
Dr. Joachim Carvallo (1869-1936), Château de Villandry, Indre-et-Loire, France (both according to Marlier, loc. cit.).
With Galerie Arens, Brussels, from whom acquired by the grandparents of the present owners on 28 December 1926.
Literature
G. Marlier, Pierre Brueghel le Jeune, Brussels, 1969, p. 242, no. 5.
K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere, Lingen, 2000, II, p. 621, no. F731.
Exhibited
Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Exposition du Paysage Flamand, 1926, no. 75.
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

This painting has been accepted as an autograph work by Dr. Klaus Ertz, having examined it in the original; Dr. Ertz had previously (loc. cit.) questioned the attribution on the basis of an old photograph. He dates it to circa 1616, a date that accords with the panel stamp on the reverse (see Fig. 1). Dr. Jørgen Wadum of the Mauritshuis has noted that stamp was made by a particular branding iron documented as having been employed several times on dated panels from the period 1617-26; this, he therefore notes, almost certainly dates the panel to no earlier than 1615. The composition itself is one of the most popular of the Netherlandish landscape tradition, versions of which include that sold in these Rooms, 7 July 2004, lot 24 (£1,293,250). In quality, the present painting is comparable to the finest examples: Dr. Ertz (certificate dated 4 October 2004) compares it with those in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp.

It has traditionally been thought that the prototype for the composition is a painting by Pieter II's father, Pieter Bruegel I, signed and dated 1565, in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. That view is not, however, beyond dispute: although Friedländer considered it to be an autograph work by Pieter I, authors as early as Groomann and Glück were doubtful of the attribution, and the question remains open. As noted in the recent exhibition, Brueghel Enterprises (Maastricht, Bonnefanten Museum and Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 2002), two other hypotheses have been put forward: that the putative original by Pieter I is that formerly in the A. Hassid Collection, London; and that neither work is the original, the Brussels painting being a studio production painted with only the assistance of Pieter I, whose prime version remains undiscovered (an opinion that reflects the initial study through the Brueghel Enterprises catalogue into the nature of Pieter II's studio practice, suggesting that almost all his output should at least in some degree be regarded as collaborative). With regard to the present composition, however, the catalogue did not mention, the theory advanced by Klaus Ertz (op. cit., p. 576) that the prototype may instead be a lost work by Jan Brueghel I inspired by his father's famous Hunters in the Snow of 1565 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), to the middle ground of which the present composition clearly relates.

Whatever the prototype the distinctive beauty of the composition remains unchallenged. After the Vienna picture, the view represents one of the earliest pure representations of the Netherlandish landscape (in the catalogue of the exhibition Le siècle de Brueghel, Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, 27 September-24 November 1963, p. 69, George Marlier identified the village depicted as Pède-Ste-Anne in Brabant, the silhouette in the background being that of Antwerp) and one of the seminal examples of the theme of the winter landscape. Indeed, within that genre, it is perhaps the most expressive of all such compositions due to the introduction of the unusual bird trap theme above the view of the villagers at play on the ice; Ertz, loc. cit., describes the composition as a simple, genre-like landscape; however, this to a degree underestimates the inventiveness and originality displayed. The theme of the winter landscape, and in particular that of skaters on ice, has often been suggested to represent the precariousness of life: indeed such a topic is even inscribed, on an engraving after Pieter I depicting A winter landscape with skaters on the ice before the Saint George Gate at Antwerp: 'Lubricitas Vitae Humanae. La Lubricité de la vie humaine. Die Slibberachtigheyt van's Menschen Leven.' Similar underlying lessons are well documented in the oeuvre of Pieter I but are rarely translated into his son's work. The Bird Trap, however, is given an aspect of his lasting poignancy - over and above the beautifully atmospheric landscape depiction - by the addition of its synonymous theme: the obliviousness of the birds towards the threat of the trap mirrored by the carefree play of the skaters upon the fragile ice. It is perhaps a mark of Brueghel's emphathy with his subject that the subtle motif is absent in so many adaptions by his followers: for example, the Winter landscape by Abel Grimmer in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels.

Sold with a certificate of authenticity by Dr. Klaus Ertz, dated 4 October 2004.

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