Joos de Momper the Younger

Dr. Einar Perman (1893-1976), Stockholm, by descent to the present owners

T. Gerszi, 'Joos de Momper als Zeichner, Teil 2,' Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, neue volge vol. 36, 1994, p. 183, fig. 28

Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the Nationalmuseum and other Swedish Collections, 1953, cat. 73;

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden. Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, cat. 77

Village scenes of this type constitute a small but significant section of Joos de Momper’s artistic output, including some of his most original and atmospheric works. This large, very well preserved sheet is one of his most substantial surviving drawings of this type of subject. It is also very unusual in containing no figures at all; in almost all the artist’s other drawings of village and street scenes there are, as in his paintings, small groups of figures going about their daily business, but this really does seem to be a drawing made more as a direct record of a particular location than as a ‘concept drawing’ for a painting, or a finished, pictorial work in its own right. 

Momper depicted village scenes like this throughout the course of his career, and in many respects his drawing style did not change much, once he had returned from his early period of study in Italy, where he trained under Lodewijk Toeput, called Pozzoserrato (1550-1604). That said, the open and expansive composition led Teréz Gerszi to consider this a late work (see Literature). Similar in approach and handling are drawings such as the Winter Village Scene, in Leipzig¹, or the Fire in a Village, in the Albertina, Vienna², while the details of foliage, for example, are very comparable to some of the artist’s most characteristic drawings, such as the definitive, signed and dated Landscape with a rider and another figure (1596), in the Witt Collection at the Courtauld Gallery.³

Significant drawings by Joos de Momper the Younger only come very rarely to the market. In the last two decades, just two other substantial, mature sheets have appeared at auction -- sold from the collections of two great scholars of drawings, A. Paul Oppé (2016) and prof. I.Q. van Regteren Altena (2014).⁴ 

1. Leipzig, Museum der bildenden Künste, inv. N.I. 463
2. Vienna, Albertina, inv. 24754
3. London, Courtauld Gallery, inv. D.1952.RW.3110
4. Respectively, sale, London, Sotheby's, 5 July 2016, lot 91, and London, Christie's, 10 July 2014, lot 3