Pieter Brueghel the Younger

Laurent Meeus (1872-1950), Brussels;
From whose widow acquired in 1950 by a private collector;
From whom inherited by the father of the present owner. 

The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on an oak panel, with one joint slightly lower than centre, which has been cradled probably fairly early in the last century. The joint has been reglued and has a line of retouching. The restoration probably dates from the same period as the cradle, with a later revarnishing. The upper plank was more susceptible to movement than the lower, which has remained beautifully stable and flat, with no trace of past retouching along the grain or raised paint. In the upper section various slightly darkened minor old retouchings can be seen with the naked eye, for instance a narrow line across the chest of the bride and the neck of the heavy man in black nearby, touches on the hanging behind her head, as well as a retouched line across the bushes behind. The sky has various slightly discoloured horizontal old retouchings, especially in the upper right corner. A few other touches along the grain can be seen under ultra violet light for instance in the dark coat of the man watching the man drinking from a jug. Many retouchings such as these may be superfluous surface touches to mute the lines of the wood grain. However in the sky there may well have been tiny lost flakes. In the upper left area there are slight, potentially raised, ridges of paint, although apparently firm, which could be checked. However apart from the restoration mentioned above the fine unworn quality of the paint suggests the picture had a remarkably stable undisturbed earlier life. It is rare to find such rich depth of colour and translucent glazing, with all the fine detail and draughtsmanship crisply intact. Even the deep browns of the foreground, seldom intact, are almost entirely unworn apart from a slight thinness on the right. The sky has suffered and there seems at some point to have been a wider frame leaving a faint mark down the left edge, but the figures and the main body of the painting is magnificently intact. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
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This hitherto unrecorded picture has been in the same family collection for the last sixty years.  The subject is one of Pieter Brueghel the Younger's most popular, since it is known in over sixty versions that can be associated with him, of which about half have been accepted by Klaus Ertz as clearly autograph.¹  Of these, about half are signed, and almost as many dated.  The dated pictures span the years 1607 to 1626, with two pictures from 1607, and another from 1610.²  The present work, one of the finest that survive and in an excellent state of preservation, is thus one of the earlier versions.

As with many, perhaps all of the compositions painted by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, the design was most likely transferred by tracing, which is why all the autograph versions of the composition are on panels of approximately the same dimensions, (although by a small margin the present work is one of the largest).  Evidence for the use of tracing is provided by the underdrawing, which can be clearly seen in an infrared reflectography scan (see fig. 1).³  

Although no painting by him survives, the composition seems to originate with the artist's father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, since it is recorded in an engraving of it in reverse by Pieter van der Heyden (see fig. 2).  Pieter Brueghel the Younger made the composition less congested, with fewer peripheral figures, more space between the figures, and more landscape details and greater distance.

PROVENANCE
Baron Laurent Meeus (1872-1950) was a Belgian industrialist, and was one of the founders of the petrochemical concern Petrofina SA in the 1920s.  In his heyday he was a very active collector of Old Master Paintings, and was a great bibliophile who assembled an outstanding library.  He became President of the Friends of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, the main organisation of the museum in financing the acquisition of works of art.  He had intended to donate his Old Master collection to the Museum, but because of the opprobrium that the economic collaboration of Petrofina in wartime with the Axis powers (particularly in the Romanian oilfields) brought him after the war, this never came about.

We are grateful to Jacques Lust, Expert in Restitution matters, Belgian Federal Science Policy, for his help in researching the provenance of this lot.

1.  See K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere (1564-1637/38).  Die Gemälde.  Mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Lingen 2000, vol. 2, pp. 684-96, 722-736, nos. E 916-944 (E = Echt, meaning authentic), nos. F 945-979 (F = Fraglich, meaning doubtful); the remainder are A numbers (A = Abgeschriebene, meaning de-attributed), many reproduced.
2.  Ertz, op. cit., p. 722, nos. E 916 (Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery), E 917 (Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts), E 918 (French private collection).
3.  For a comprehensive discussion of the use of tracing to transfer Brueghel designs, including extensive reproductions of IRR scans of underdrawing, see P. van den Brink et al, Brueghel Enterprises, exhibition catalogue, Maastricht 2001.