Lot 1224 Dα

Von Josse de Momper the Younger was one of the most significant Flemish landscape artists around 1600. However, only one signed work of his has survived, the others are - like this piece - unsigned. Klaus Ertz dates this large scale work to the 1620s, putting it in the painter's later phase. The loose brushwork used in this image to create its painterly style simply wasn't used yet in the middle of the artist's career. The new form of colouration also speaks for a later date: Whilst in the 16th century, de Momper still stood firmly in the Flemish tradition of using three colour zones - brown for the foreground, green for the mid ground and blue for the background - this work already shows the reduction to two zones of colour, whereby in this case the mid ground blends into the foreground.
Whilst the landscape stems from the late period of Josse de Momper, Ertz attributes the figures and animals to an artist from the circle of Sebastian Vrancx (1573-1647). The theme of the painting is autumn, with all the typical activities it entails in a village: The grape harvest, the recovery of the winter grain and driving the herds from the fields to the stalls. The three astrological signs of autumn - libra, scorpio and sagittarius - are depicted in the sky in the upper edge of the image. This indicates that the work was originally part of a series of the four seasons.