Jan Brueghel the Younger - Summer Landscape with Ceres - image-1

Lot 2069 Dα

Jan Brueghel the Younger - Summer Landscape with Ceres

Auction 1097 - overview Cologne
18.11.2017, 11:00 - Old Master Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture
Estimate: 80.000 € - 100.000 €
Result: 74.400 € (incl. premium)

Jan Brueghel the Younger

Summer Landscape with Ceres

Oil on copper. 70.2 x 88.2 cm.
Signed lower right: I. Breughel.

In this summery landscape, Jan Brueghel depicts both the fertility of nature, personified by the goddess Ceres, and the wealth which she gives man in the form of crops and cattle. The ground is strewn with melons, grapes, peaches, and plums, colourful wild flowers bloom by the wayside, and a little stream winds its way through the landscape. In the background we see a peasant at the harvest and a milkmaid at her work, and the spade and plough in the left foreground present further allusions to man's cultivation of the earth. Ceres is shown resting at the foot of a tree, wearing a crown of flowers, holding a cornucopia, and accompanied by a retinue of animals and putti. In this work, Brueghel evokes a rural idyll in which man lives in harmony with nature.
Klaus Ertz presumes that this landscape originally formed part of a series of the four elements or the four seasons, representing either earth or summer respectively. He dates the work to the 1650s due to stylistic criteria, comparing it to a series of other landscapes from around this time displaying similarity in composition, colouring, and motifs (cf. expertise dated 26.5.1996).

Certificate

Klaus Ertz, Lingen, 30.5.1996.

Provenance

Collection of Marquis de la Caze, ca. 1825. - The Edmond Hubrechts Collection, Antwerp, 1901. - Robert Finck Gallery, Brussels, 1960. - Private collection, America. - Lempertz auction 753, Cologne, 6.12.1997, lot 1119. - Private collection, South Germany.