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拍品专文
This impressive panel was described by Walter Liedtke in 1989 as ‘one of the best versions’ of what was a relatively late composition in Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s oeuvre. Only eight autograph versions of the composition are listed by Ertz in his catalogue raisonné, ranging between 1610 and 1622, and this is the second earliest in date (op. cit.).
The scene shows two men engaged in a violent argument over a game of cards. The deck has been dashed to the ground and the bench on which they were presumably playing overturned. The man in green at the left of the picture swings a flail at the head of the man in red, who pushes away a woman with his pitchfork. Both men use agrarian tools as their weapons indicating their pastoral occupations. Another man attempts to separate them, while a woman tries to stop the man in red by hitting him over the head with a jug. The background of the painting shows a group of peasants dancing, derived from the successful series of paintings made by Brueghel and his workshop of The Wedding Dance, which in turn rely on a work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder now in Detroit (Institute of Art, acc. no. 30.374). This temperate, jovial behaviour of the background contrasts with and accentuates the hostile action of the foreground, warning against the dangers of gambling and drink. Only a small number of the autograph Peasants brawling by Brueghel the Younger show this dancing group, in other versions this detail is replaced with market carts or other village scenes.
Although no surviving prototype for this composition by Bruegel the Elder is known, his authorship is universally accepted, and can be inferred from various early sources. An engraving by Lucas Vosterman, dated to circa 1620, for example, is inscribed ‘Pet. Bruegel inven.’ (fig. 1), and a letter written by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, one of the greatest collectors of his age, to his agent in Antwerp in 1625, stated: ‘I do therefore earnestly desire that you would receive for me a peace of a painting begunne by Brugles [Bruegel] and finished by Mostard [Gillis Mostaert]; being a squabbling of clownes fallen out at Cardes, w[hi]ch is in stampe by Mr. Vorstermann’ (see M. Hervey, The Life, Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Cambridge, 1921, p. 301). This picture was mentioned again in the will of Lady Arundel, who died in Amsterdam in 1655 as: ‘BRVEGEL Contadini ch si batteno’. The specific details given in the Arundel letter do suggest that a painting did exist, and the fact that it was finished by Gillis Mostaert could reflect the fact that Pieter the Elder's work was from late in his career - maybe even left incomplete at his death, in which case it would be plausible that either of his sons inherited it. That Arundel's letter was written shortly after Jan I's death could, of course, be nothing more than coincidence.
The scene shows two men engaged in a violent argument over a game of cards. The deck has been dashed to the ground and the bench on which they were presumably playing overturned. The man in green at the left of the picture swings a flail at the head of the man in red, who pushes away a woman with his pitchfork. Both men use agrarian tools as their weapons indicating their pastoral occupations. Another man attempts to separate them, while a woman tries to stop the man in red by hitting him over the head with a jug. The background of the painting shows a group of peasants dancing, derived from the successful series of paintings made by Brueghel and his workshop of The Wedding Dance, which in turn rely on a work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder now in Detroit (Institute of Art, acc. no. 30.374). This temperate, jovial behaviour of the background contrasts with and accentuates the hostile action of the foreground, warning against the dangers of gambling and drink. Only a small number of the autograph Peasants brawling by Brueghel the Younger show this dancing group, in other versions this detail is replaced with market carts or other village scenes.
Although no surviving prototype for this composition by Bruegel the Elder is known, his authorship is universally accepted, and can be inferred from various early sources. An engraving by Lucas Vosterman, dated to circa 1620, for example, is inscribed ‘Pet. Bruegel inven.’ (fig. 1), and a letter written by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, one of the greatest collectors of his age, to his agent in Antwerp in 1625, stated: ‘I do therefore earnestly desire that you would receive for me a peace of a painting begunne by Brugles [Bruegel] and finished by Mostard [Gillis Mostaert]; being a squabbling of clownes fallen out at Cardes, w[hi]ch is in stampe by Mr. Vorstermann’ (see M. Hervey, The Life, Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Cambridge, 1921, p. 301). This picture was mentioned again in the will of Lady Arundel, who died in Amsterdam in 1655 as: ‘BRVEGEL Contadini ch si batteno’. The specific details given in the Arundel letter do suggest that a painting did exist, and the fact that it was finished by Gillis Mostaert could reflect the fact that Pieter the Elder's work was from late in his career - maybe even left incomplete at his death, in which case it would be plausible that either of his sons inherited it. That Arundel's letter was written shortly after Jan I's death could, of course, be nothing more than coincidence.