Joos de Momper and Jan Brueghel II

(Antwerp 1564–1635) and (Antwerp 1601–1678)
A winter landscape with travellers on a path and a town beyond,
oil on panel, 51 x 80 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, A. B. Rasmussen, Stockholm, April 1974;
with Galerie de Boer, Amsterdam (1974);
Private collection, Germany;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 1985, lot 152

Literature:
K. Ertz, Josse de Momper der Jüngere (1564–1635), Freren 1986, p. 238, p. 236, pl. 260, p. 582, no. 424

Ertz dates the present painting to the 1620s. The figures are by Jan Brueghel II.

Joos de Momper was one of Antwerp’s leading landscape painters in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and became particularly well known as a painter of mountainscapes. He was celebrated by such contemporaries as Karel van Mander, who commended his ‘aerdighe handelinge’ or ‘subtle manner of working’ in his Het Schilderboek of 1604. Anthony van Dyck immortalised him through a portrait print that was part of his contribution to the ‘Iconography’ series; a portrait series depicting famous noblemen, scholars, and especially artists.

The present painting is a typical example of de Momper’s oeuvre in terms of the handling of paint and the composition, which has been so thoughtfully constructed.De Momper often collaborated with other artists, who would add the staffage to his landscapes, thus following a practice that was common during this period in the Netherlands. Jan Brueghel the Elder frequently collaborated with de Momper and in a letter to Ercole Bianchi he even described him as ‘Mio amico Momper’. We can assume that de Momper met his son Jan Brueghel the Younger before Jan Brueghel the Elder left for Italy in 1622. This meeting marked the beginning of a collaborative relationship that would become one of the longest and most successful ones in de Momper’s career.