Circle of Jan Brueghel the Elder

The panel is flat and uncradled. The paint surface is clean. There is a 1 cm paint loss to the lower left margin. Furthermore old discoloured retouching is discernible throughout the picture. Ultra violet inspection reveals traces of old varnish through the central passage of the painting, to the buildings, boats and water. There is also significant retouching to the sky, the tree, the bell tower and figures in the foreground. To a lesser extent there is some retouching to the left hand margin. Offered in a simple carved Dutch style wooden frame in very good condition.
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This painting is clearly inspired by the village landscapes of Jan Brueghel the Elder, both in its composition with craft crossing an estuary towards a heavily populated river bank and a town beyond, and in its figure types: several are related to those in works by the elder Brueghel, such as: the woman crouching down in the central foreground to lift a fish out of the bucket, which recalls the figure in the foreground of Brueghel's 1616 copper sold in these rooms, 9 July 2008 lot 19 and the figure, in reverse, in the 1614-dated View of Schelle in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The latter also provides the model for the male figure dressed in black, third from right, who in the Vienna painting is almost certainly a self-portrait of the artist himself (in the Vienna painting he is shown surrounded by his entire family). The boy in a red shirt, holding a fish by the gills and stepping across from the fishmongers to the group on the right, also appears in the Vienna painting.