Loading Spinner
Don’t miss out on items like this!

Sign up to get notified when similar items are available.

Lot 30: A mountainous landscape with travellers and herdsmen on a path

Est: £100,000 GBP - £150,000 GBPSold:
Christie'sLondon, United KingdomJuly 09, 2015

Item Overview

Description

Joos de Momper II (Antwerp 1564-1635) and Jan Brueghel II (Antwerp 1601-1678) A mountainous landscape with travellers and herdsmen on a path oil on panel 17.5 x 29.5 in. (44.5 x 74.9 cm.)

Dimensions

44.5 x 74.9 cm.

Artist or Maker

Literature

K. Ertz, Josse de Momper der Jüngere (1564-1635): Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Freren, 1986, p. 511, no. 161, fig. 161.

Notes

This picture is an excellent example of Joos de Momper’s mannerist landscape panoramas and typical of his mature style of the 1620s. A prolific painter, whose specialisation in mountainous landscapes earned him the nickname ‘pictor montium’, when his portrait was made for van Dyck’s Iconographia (circa 1632-44; fig. 1), de Momper collaborated with a number of artists including Jan Brueghel the Elder, with whom he famously developed a long-lasting friendship. In a letter to Ercole Bianchi in 1622, written on Brueghel’ s behalf by Rubens, Brueghel specifically referred to de Momper as ‘Mio amico Momper’. De Momper and Brueghel the Younger would have met in his father’s studio before the latter’s departure for Italy in 1622. Jan Brueghel was to become, without question, the most important figure painter in de Momper’s late landscapes (Ertz, op. cit.,p. 395). Ertz dates several examples of the Younger’s collaboration with de Momper to around the same period as the present picture (see, for example, Ertz, op. cit., nos. 153, 154, 158-162 and 165). Brueghel and de Momper each had a distinctive style and different talent. Through combining their skills, they were able to produce an entirely new kind of work for the buoyant Antwerp market and beyond. Such commercial enterprise was the raison d’être of collaboration and, as a practice, it was central to the both their careers. Unlike Brueghel, who also produced history and flower paintings, de Momper specialised exclusively in decorative landscape views that could be seen from some distance. De Momper’s large, broadly painted landscapes provided atmospheric settings for Brueghel’s figures, while they, in turn, animated de Momper’s vast panoramas. Their painting styles complemented one another: the fine, meticulous detail of Brueghel’s technique serves to focus the eye in the context of de Momper’s atmospheric landscape. The high view point, with the wide, sweeping brush strokes, streaky colouring, finely applied contours, use of white highlights, and the arrangement of the landscape into two planes of brown foreground tones and a blue background are characteristic features of de Momper’s maturity in the 1620s.

Auction Details

Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale

by
Christie's
July 09, 2015, 07:00 PM UTC

8 King Street, St. James's, London, LDN, SW1Y 6QT, UK