JOOS DE MOMPER the Younger and JAN BRUEGHEL the... Lot 3043

JOOS DE MOMPER the Younger and JAN BRUEGHEL the Younger (1564 Antwerp 1635) (1601 Antwerp 1678) Hilly coastal landscape with fish vendors. Oil on wood. 38 × 48.8 cm. Expert opinion: Dr. Klaus Ertz, 21.8.2021. Provenance: European private property. After inspecting the original, Dr. Klaus Ertz identifies the present work, whose picture support was dated to the early 17th century by a dendrochronological examination, as a collaboration between Joos de Momper and Jan Brueghel the Younger, created around 1630. It shows a particularly interesting section of the picture. The rugged line of the ruin and rocky outcrop on the left and the harbor in the background appear, to use a vocabulary inexistent at the time, particularly picturesque. In fact, the Dutch painters knew a similar ideal in the combination of the beautiful and the sublime under the term "schilder-achtig" (see Boudewijn Bakker: Schilderachtig: discussions of a seventeenth-century term and concept, in: Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, vol. 23, no. 2/3, 1995, pp. 147-162). The tension of this scene is largely due to the refined lighting, which bathes both the ocher-reddish ground and the shimmering green-blue water in a wide range of colors. Different surfaces of rough stones, shimmering fish scales, and colored linens create a varied tactile universe. Above all, the group of people in the foreground, bent over, sitting, nursing, and crawling, presents an anatomical study. The landscape motif is already known in the œuvre of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625), as evidenced by a drawing in the RKD, The Hague (No. 54020), which show the same rocky outcrop and architectural form. These objects marked with * (asterisk) are fully subject to VAT, i.e. for these objects VAT will be charged on the hammer price plus buyer's premium. Buyers who present a legally stamped export declaration will be refunded the VAT.