Follower of Marten van Cleve the Elder, early 17th century

Anonymous sale, London, Phillips, 20 April 1993, lot 116 (as Marten van Cleve the Elder);

Where acquired by the present owner.

This panel replicates one of Marten van Cleve's most popular and influential compositions, stemming from his series of episodes depicting a peasant or country wedding.¹ Illustrated here is the wedding feast, in which the young bride, crowned as queen of the day is surrounded by feasting revelers. The composition of this work most closely resembles that of a work sold at Sotheby's London in 2019, as part of a set of four panels.² The latter, of near identical dimensions, differs only slightly in the arrangement of the figures.

Like Peter Brueghel the Elder, Marten van Cleve's works were themselves copied and provided the basis for countless versions and repetitions by the next generation of painters in Antwerp, most notably the former’s son Pieter Brueghel the Younger and his studio over forty years later.³

The reverse of this panel bears the panel maker's mark of Guilliam Gabron (1586–1674), who registered in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke as tafereelmaker (panel maker) in 1609 and trained others until as late as 1662. Consisting of the letters 'GG' interlinked by four-leafed flower, he used this mark from 1614 to 1626. From 1617, the brand of the city of Antwerp would also have been burned into the panel. Its absence here suggests a tentative dating to between 1614 and 1617.⁴

¹ For a listing of the various iterations of this subject see K. Ertz, Marten van Cleve 1527–1581, Lingen 2014, pp. 199–205.

² Anonymous sale ('Property from a Private Collection), London, Sotheby's, 4 December 2019, lot 21; https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/old-masters-evening-sale/marten-van-cleve-the-elder-the-procession-of-the

³ K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere, Lingen 1988/2000, vol. II, pp. 641–643 and 705–706.

⁴ A. van Suchtelen, 'Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man', in Rubens and Brueghel: A Working Friendship, A.T. Woollett and A. van Suchtelen (eds), Los Angeles 2006, p. 66.