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Artist or Maker: Brueghel, Pieter II (1564-1637)
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Provenance: M.G. Béague collection, Méry-sur-Seine, 1935.
Anonymous sale; Charpentier, Paris, 31 March 1938, lot 27.
Acquired by the father of the present owners in 1951.
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Exhibited: Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Cinq Siècles d'Art. Exposition Universelle et Internationale, 1935, no. 144, as Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
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Literature: C. de Tolnay, Pierre Bruegel l'Ancien, Brussels, 1935, II, pp. 93-4, no. 45, fig. 138, as Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
L. Van Puyvelde, 'Pierre Brueghel l'ancien à l'exposition d'art ancien de Bruxelles 1935', in Bulletin de la Société royale d'Archéologie de Bruxelles, September-November 1935.
P. Colin, Bruegel le Vieux, Paris, 1936, pp. 169-70.
G. Jedlicka, Pieter Brueghel. Der Maler in seiner Zeit, Zurich/Leipzig, 1938, pp. 344-52.
G. Glück, Das Große Bruegel-Werk, Vienna/Munich, 1951, p. 24.
R. Genaille, Bruegel l'Ancien, Paris/Brussels, 1953, p. 110, under no. P.XLII, 'Het oorspronkelijke is misschien het schilderij van de verzameling Béague te Méry-sur-Seine'.
G. Arpino & P. Bianconi, L'Opera Completa di Bruegel, Milan, 1967, p. 102, under no. 55.
G. Marlier, Pierre Brueghel le Jeune, Brussels, 1969, pp. 261-3, fig. 156.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum Catalogue, 1972, p. 15.
K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere, Lingen, 2000, I, p. 210, no. E121; and pp. 147, 149, and 566, fig. 117.
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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
The Bad Shepherd is one of the most original and visually arresting of all images within the Brueghelian corpus of paintings. It is also one of the rarest and this is the only autograph treatment of the subject in existence. Although, like so many of the artist's compositions, it is thought to be reliant on a design by his father, no related work by the Pieter Bruegel the Elder survives. Klaus Ertz records just five versions or copies by anonymous followers of the two artists and one by Joos de Momper (Scottish private collection), in which he attributes the figurative element to the younger Brueghel (K. Ertz, op. cit., pp. 210-11, nos. E120-A126). Beautifully preserved, having spent the last 57 years in the same collection, this is the picture's first appearance at auction since its sale in Paris in 1938.
Such is the picture's close affinities with Pieter Bruegel the Elder, both in terms of its subject matter and its precise handling, it is hardly surprising that it was initially considered to be by the elder artist when it first came to light at the Brussels exhibition of 1935. There it hung alongside the version from the Johnson collection (Philadelphia Museum of Art; Ertz, no. A125) which had previously been published by Hulin de Loo and Bastelaer as the prime version of the composition by Bruegel the Elder (R. von Bastelaer and H. de Loo, Pieter Bruegel l'Ancien, son oeuvre et son temps, Brussels, 1907, p. 307, no. A29). However, reviewers of the exhibition were not convinced by the Philadelphia picture and Puyvelde (loc. cit.), noting its poor state of conservation, suggested that it was actually by Marten van Cleve. Most recently, Klaus Ertz has declared the Philadelphia picture to be unattributable.
Although the Brussels exhibition established the supremacy of the present picture over the Philadelphia version - Genaille (loc. cit.) even suggesting some years later that this was Bruegel the Elder's original - there remained a good deal of confusion amongst scholars in the ensuing years as to whether it was by Bruegel father or son. Colin already suggested in 1936 (loc. cit.) that it was by the son but it is worth noting that when the picture appeared at auction in Paris just two years later - 'attributed to Brueghel' - it made the enormous sum of 43,000 francs, suggesting that it was widely perceived as by the father. Gluck (loc. cit.) endorsed the attribution to Brueghel the Younger in 1951, based on the by then widely held assumption that the composition must have been dependent on a lost original by Pieter Bruegel the Elder dating from his final years. Marlier (loc. cit.) observed that the configuration of the signature accorded with that used by the artist around 1615-20, a dating with which Ertz concurred on the same grounds, and by comparison with The Good Shepherd in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, that is reliably signed and dated 1616.
The Bad Shepherd offers a coded warning against uncertainty and moral weakness. Faced with the decision as to whether to try to defend his sheep from the wolf or turn and flee, the shepherd has been unable to resist temptation and takes the well trodden path to safety. He glances behind him at the attacker maiming the sheep, his expression perhaps one of guilt, as he departs. The artist painted a counterpart to the subject in The Good Shepherd, which was also probably indebted to a work of his father's and is known today from two small panels (the aforementioned picture in Brussels and another sold Christie's, New York, 6 April 2006, lot 39; see fig.1), which show the shepherd acting in the opposite way by confronting the wolf and giving up his own life in order to save his sheep.
The origins of the subject, as with several of Brueghel the Elder's Parable themes such as The Sower (San Diego, Timken Museum of Art) and The Blind leading the Blind (Naples, Capodimonte Museum), are found in the Bible. The story of the good and bad shepherd is told in John (10:1-30), and is based on the notion of Christ as the embodiment of the good shepherd.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hireling and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hireling and cares nothing for the sheep.
It is significant that the distant horizon behind the sheep is broken only by a solitary church spire and a small farmstead. They seem to suggest that in abandoning his responsiblities the shepherd also rejects both the church and the community as he rushes headlong in the opposite direction. The mental anguish experienced by the shepherd is mirrored in a remarkable way by the barren landscape, shown from a dizzying bird's eye perspective, stretching back into infinity. Interwoven only by vein-like tracks and ditches that lead the eye into the distance, the landscape is one of the artist's most extraordinary achievements and very much a precursor to the psychological landscapes of the 20th century. It finds echoes only in the Couple attacked by bandits (Stockholm, University Museum), that is also most likely indebted to Brueghel the Elder's output in the 1560s, when, as Marlier has noted, he seems to have drawn inspiration from the countryside around his native Brabant.
The originality of Brueghel's landscape is matched by his depiction of the central protagonist who is shown in motion, the wind catching his hair and his direction indicated by the staff that he carries in his right hand. The idea of painting a figure travelling at speed was new. Marlier summarises the scene in poetic terms: '..il introduit encore un facteur supplémentaire, jamais exploité à son époque, celui de la vitesse: si le berger est fixé dans l'attitude de la course, et passe en trombe devant le spectateur, le corps incliné vers le premier plan à gauche, par contre le paysage, qui se limite à une immense étendue, donne l'impression, par le direction de la route détrempée de fuir et de basculer en sens inverse vers le fond. Tout se passe comme si le spectateur lui-même se mouvait dans un rapide véhicule'.
