Adriaen van Stalbemt - Bathing Nymphs

Adriaen van Stalbemt

Bathing Nymphs

Oil on panel. 50 x 63 cm.

In the first two decades of the 17th century, Adriaen van Stalbemt belonged to the wider circle of J. Brueghel the Younger in Antwerp. This painter, who in turn cultivated the successful style of his father Jan the Elder, was the inspiration for the fine treatment of the foliage and the blue-green hues of his landscape paintings. However, it was around the year 1620 that Adriaen van Stalbemt found his personal style. His figures, which until then had been influenced by Elsheimer, came to be closer to those of Hendrick van Balen. However, with their averted gazes and missing profiles, his figures developed an independence that could not be found with any other painter in Antwerp. His landscapes, on the other hand, utilised a more traditional model with a high horizon line and vertical framing, such as can be found in the Flemish 17th-century landscapes of Josse de Momper and his contemporaries. This painting dates to the 1620s and can be compared to his bathers in Ertz/Nitze-Ertz 2018, no. 221.
We would like to thank Dr Klaus Ertz for his support in cataloguing this work.

Certificate

Gutachten Klaus Ertz, September 2018.

Provenance

Dutch private collection.

Literature

Cf.: K. Ertz / C. Nitze-Ertz: Adriaen van Stalbemt, 2018.