Jan Brueghel the Elder

By descent in the family of the present owner since the early 20th Century.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This small work is in good condition. The copper is flat. The paint layer is clean. Under ultraviolet light, one can see a few tiny spots of retouching in the sky and one slightly larger retouched loss in the upper left corner. No retouches are evident in the foreground. If the varnish were freshened, the work should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This refined and jewel-like copper is the earliest dated windmill landscape known to exist by Jan Brueghel the Elder. Executed in 1606, it was painted only a few years following Brueghel's return to the Low Countries from his formative Italian sojourn, where his mature style would coalesce around the iconic iconography and technique found here. This formal type, of which this is the earliest known, would become among Brueghel’s most successful, and was utilized by him on future occasions. It may be compared with two similar landscapes, both signed and dated 1611: one, today in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich; the other in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere, Cologne 1979, p. 597, cat. nos. 236 & 237, reproduced p. 66, figures 37 & 38 respectively). All three compositions share an open landscape viewed from a high vantage-point, with a panoramic and seemingly limitless horizon (reminiscent of the Weltlandschaft tradition of Joachim Patinir and Herri met de Bles), punctuated by one or a row of windmills positioned above a track running diagonally across the scene, populated with figures congregating and loading and unloading grain from horse-drawn carts. These pictures belong to a homogeneous group of landscapes painted by Jan Brueghel the Elder during the first two decades of the 17th century, which share similar subject matter and compositional schemes.

A slightly later version of this composition of similar size and scale is dated 1609, and was formerly with Richard Green Gallery, London (see K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere, Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, Lingen, 2008, I, pp. 323-324, no. 54, illustrated).

Professor Klaus Ertz has previously examined this work first hand and endorses the attribution to Brueghel the Elder.