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2 juillet 2017

Jan Brueghel I, Figures dancing on the bank of a river with a fish-seller, with a portrait of the artist in the foreground

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Lot 42. Jan Brueghel I (Brussels 1568-1625 Antwerp), Figures dancing on the bank of a river with a fish-seller, with a portrait of the artist in the foreground, signed and dated 'BRVEGHEL 1616 FECIT' (lower left), oil on copper, 10 x 14 ¾ in. (25.5 x 37.5 cm.). Estimate GBP 5,500,000 - GBP 8,000,000 (USD 7,001,500 - USD 10,184,000) © Christie's Images Ltd 2017

ProvenanceJohann Wilhelm, Kurfurst von der Pfalz (1658-1716), at one of his two Gemaldekabinetten in Dusseldorf, and by inheritance to his brother, 
Karl III Philipp, Kurfurst von der Pfalz (1661-1742), at Dusseldorf and Mannheim, where recorded in an inventory of 1730, and again in 1731, and by inheritance to his nephew, 
Karl Theodor von Pfalz-Sulzbach (1724-1799) Kurfurst von der Pfalz, from 1743 and Kurfurst von Bayern from 1777, Mannheim and Munich, and by inheritance to, 
Maximilian IV Joseph, Herzog von Zweibrucken, Elector of the Palatine and Bavaria, later King of Bavaria (1756-1825), and by descent in the Bavarian Royal Collections at Schleissheim and Munich until 1923, when sold by exchange to the following,
with Julius Bohler, Munich, by whom sold in August 1923 to,
Hans Mettler (1876-1945), Sankt Gallen, Switzerland; his sale (†), Christie’s, London, 29 June, 1979, lot 12.
with David Koetser, Zurich, from whom acquired by the following by 1980,
Anonymous sale [The Property of a Private Collector]; Sotheby’s, London, 9 July 2008, lot 19 (£3,513,250), when acquired by the present owner.

LiteratureDetail des Peintures du Cabinet Electoral de Dusseldorfundated, Wolfenbuttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, no. 2.
Inventarium über die in Ihrer Churfürstl. Dhltg. beijden Cabineten zu Düsseldorf beffundene rahre gemähl, ..., welche von Gülich und Bergischen Hoff Camer Rathen Karsch ...Mss. 1730, Karlsruhe, Generallandesarchiv, no. 2, as ‘Ein bauern Tantz von F. Brugel’.
Cabinets de Son altesse Serenissime Electorale du château de Mannheim, l’an 1731Paris, 1731, MS 409, Bibliotheque d’Art et d’Archeologie, where reproduced in the lower left corner of the drawing of the fourth wall.
J. van Gool, De Nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlandsche Kunstschilders en SchilderessenThe Hague 1750-51, II, p. 559.
Detail des Peintures des deux Cabinets Electoraux à Mannheim, undated Mss., Munich, Geheimes Hausarchiv, inv. no. 882 v.g., no. 194.
C. von Mannlich, Beschreibung der Königlich-Baierischen Gemälde-Sammlungen. Enthaltend die Gemälde zu Schleisheim und LustheimMunich, 1810, III, p. 180, no. 2224, where recorded at Schleissheim as a pair with no. 2225, as ‘Johann Brueghel. Zwey Landschaften mit Figuren, Wagen und landlichen Gebauden. Auf dem ersten Bilde die See mit Fischerbooten, ein Fischmarkt und tanzende Bauern und Bauerinnen. ... Auf Kupfer. – H. 9,6. Br. I, I’.
G. von Dillis, Verzeichnis der Gemaelde in der königlichen Pinakothek zu MünchenMunich, 1838, p. 564, no. 205.
Katalog der Gemälde-Sammlung der Kgl. Älteren Pinakothek in München. Mit einer historischen Einleitung von Dr. Franz von ReberMunich, 1884, and revised ed., 1886, p. 143; 7th ed., 1898, p. 158; 8th ed. 1901, p. 158; and 1908 ed., p. 150, no. 696, as 'Volksbelustigung vor einer kleinen an einem Fluss liegenden Stadt’.
A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-LexikonVienna and Leipzig, 1906, I, p. 205.
Y. Thiery, Le Paysage Flamand au XVIIe siècle, Brussels, 1953, p. 176.
P. Bottger, Die Alte Pinakothek in München. Mit einem Anhang: Abdruck des frühesten Gemäldeverzeichnisses der Pinakothek aus dem Jahre 1838 von Georg von Dillis. Nach den heutigen Inventarnummern identifiziert von Gisela SchefflerMunich, 1972, no. 205.
K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere, Cologne, 1979, pp. 52, 55, 78, 169, 222, 446 and 608, no. 305, figs. 27 and 538.
K. Ertz, in P. Roberts-Jones (ed.), Bruegel. Une dynastie de peintresexhibition catalogue, Brussels, 1980, p. 196, no. 130, illustrated.
E. Korthals-Altes, ‘The collections of the Palatine Electors: new information, documents and drawings’, The Burlington Magazine, CXLV, March 2003, pp. 212-3, no. 2.
M. Klinge, in M. Klinge & D. Ludke (eds.), David Teniers der Jüngere 1610-1690exhibition catalogue, Karlsruhe, 2005, p. 33, fig. 5.
K. Ertz and C. Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625): Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde: Landschaftem mit profanen ThemenLingen, 2008, I, pp. 284-7, no. 132, illustrated.
R. Baumstark (ed.), Kurfürst Johann Wilhelms Bilder: Sammler und Mäzen, Munich, 2009, I, p. 238, fig. 25.

ExhibitedMunich, Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen,1838-1923, on loan.
Brussels, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Bruegel. Une dynastie de peintres18 September-18 November 1980, no. 130.
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Breughel-Brueghel7 December 1997-14 April 1998, no. 63.
Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Breughel-Brueghel, 2 May-26 July 1998, no. 59.

NoteThis exceptional picture, formerly in an important Bavarian royal collection, is among the finest works by Jan Brueghel the Elder remaining in private hands. Executed with characteristic precision, it is signed and dated 1616, and includes a self-portrait of the artist and his family. 

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Brueghel repeatedly turned his attention to images of a riverside village beside a harbour in which the composition is organised around a road that recedes diagonally into the background. Among the first examples of this type is the River Landscape with Moorings of 1604 (fig. 1; Toledo, The Toledo Museum of Art). As is typical of many of his earliest works, the Toledo painting contains comparatively fewer figures. In paintings such as the Fish Market on the Banks of a River of 1605 (fig. 2; Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek), Brueghel began to experiment with a larger and more diverse group of figures packed densely into the painting’s foreground. The present picture is the last and arguably the most sophisticated of the series. Its copper support lends it a jewel-like quality, while the precise, smooth manner of paint evinces Brueghel’s contemporary nickname Fluweleen Brueghel (Velvet Brueghel). Of particular note is the clever manner in which Brueghel has arranged the foreground figures into two groups, flanking a row of dancers as a means of reinforcing the diagonal thrust of the composition.  

Included in the group at right is a portrait of Brueghel himself, dressed in black and seen in conversation with another man, his wife and children nearby (see detail overleaf). Brueghel and his family were painted, circa 1613-15, by the artist’s great friend and collaborator, Rubens, in a picture now in the Courtauld Gallery, London (fig. 3). This picture is one of only three – and the only one in private hands – in which the artist has included his own portrait within the landscape; as such, it must have been particularly prized by contemporary collectors. The composition’s success is indeed indicated by the existence of a reduced copy, also on copper, bearing a spurious signature and date (Turin, Galleria Sabauda). 

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Lot 42. Jan Brueghel I (Brussels 1568-1625 Antwerp), Figures dancing on the bank of a river with a fish-seller, with a portrait of the artist in the foreground. Detail: The fishermen and, left, Jan Brueghel the Elder with his family © Christie's Images Ltd 2017

P-1978-PG-362-png-15321

Peter Paul Rubens(1577-1640), Family of Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1613 – 1615 © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London 

The work is first documented in the collection of the Palatine Elector Johann Wilhelm (1658-1716; fig. 4), where it was displayed in the Electoral Gallery at the Castle in Düsseldorf. It does not appear in Gerhard Karsch’s printed gallery catalogue, which omitted some two hundred cabinet pictures kept in two private cabinets as well as thirtyfour works installed in the bedroom (G. Karsch, Ausführliche und gründliche Specification derer vortrefflichen und unschätzbaren Gemählden, welche in der Galerie der Churfürstl. Residentz zu sseldorff in grosser Menge anzutreffen seynd, Düsseldorf, 1716?). The painting is first documented as no. 2 in an undated catalogue entitled Detail des Peintures du Cabinet Electoral de Dusseldorf (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek). It next appears in an inventory of 1730, the year that Wilhelm’s brother and successor Elector Karl III Phillipp (1661- 1742) transferred a part of the collection to his new capital, Mannheim. An anonymous drawing of the Cabinets in the Mannheim Palace (fig. 5), made the following year indicates that the painting was one of six similarly sized works by the artist that were installed in two groups of three around a larger work by Peter Paul Rubens and Brueghel along the bottom row of one of the gallery’s walls (E. Korthals-Altes, ‘The collections of the Palatine Electors: new information, documents and drawings’, The Burlington Magazine, CXLV, 1200, March 2003, p. 209, fig. 98). The picture then passed to Karl III Phillipp’s nephew, Karl Theodor von Pfalz-Sulzbach (1724-1799), whose entire collection was brought to Munich in 1798-99. The copper is described as hanging at the palace at Schleissheim in an 1810 inventory compiled by the gallery’s director Christian von Mannlich. After 1836 it was moved to the newly built Alte Pinakothek, where it was included in an 1838 catalogue compiled by the artist and curator Johann Georg von Dillis. It remained there until at least 1908, at which point it is unclear whether it was transferred to one of the Filialgalerien or stored in the vaults, as it is not listed in the 1912 inventory. In 1923, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen sold the painting by exchange to the Munich art dealer Julius Böhler (1860-1934), one of a series of such sales organised by the institution in the 1920s and 1930s.  

Hans Mettler (1876-1945) was a Swiss textile trader. In 1900 he joined the family firm Mettler & Co. (established in 1745), eventually working his way up to Senior Partner. Between 1915 and 1929 Mettler assembled a valuable collection of twenty-six Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, including such seminal works as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s La grande loge, Henri Matisse’s Coucous sur le tapis bleu et rose (subsequently in the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé), and Vincent van Gogh’s Allée des Alyscamps (sold Sotheby’s, New York, 5 May 2015, lot 18). These works and the present picture, perhaps Mettler’s only major Old Master purchase, were sold in these Rooms in two sales held in June and July 1979.

Christie's. Old Masters Evening Sale, 6 July 2017, London, King Street

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Lot 42. Jan Brueghel I (Brussels 1568-1625 Antwerp), Figures dancing on the bank of a river with a fish-seller, with a portrait of the artist in the foreground. The plant-life showing Brueghel’s attention to detail © Christie's Images Ltd 2017

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Lot 42. Jan Brueghel I (Brussels 1568-1625 Antwerp), Figures dancing on the bank of a river with a fish-seller, with a portrait of the artist in the foreground. Detail: Dancing, and a fish-seller at work © Christie's Images Ltd 2017

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Lot 42. Jan Brueghel I (Brussels 1568-1625 Antwerp), Figures dancing on the bank of a river with a fish-seller, with a portrait of the artist in the foreground. Detail: The beggar holding out his hat and, centre-top, the bagpiper © Christie's Images Ltd 2017

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Lot 42. Jan Brueghel I (Brussels 1568-1625 Antwerp), Figures dancing on the bank of a river with a fish-seller, with a portrait of the artist in the foreground. Detail: The church at the end of the road © Christie's Images Ltd 2017

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