Joos de Momper - Mountain Landscape with a Ford - image-1

Lot 2033 Dα

Joos de Momper - Mountain Landscape with a Ford

Auction 1175 - overview Cologne
05.06.2021, 11:00 - Paintings and Drawings 15th to 19th C.
Estimate: 40.000 € - 45.000 €
Result: 50.000 € (incl. premium)

Joos de Momper

Mountain Landscape with a Ford

Oil on panel (parquetted). 51 x 66.5 cm.

This depiction of a mountain landscape with a ford is one of the earliest works by the Flemish landscape painter Joos de Momper. Klaus Ertz dates the piece to the late 1580s and sees in it strong echoes of the artist's journey to Italy in the early and mid 80s, although there is no documentary evidence of this journey. In addition to the notable influence of Paul Bril, whose works Momper probably studied in Rome, the strong alternation of light and shadow is also characteristic of the early work of the Antwerp painter. In the present painting, this light direction leads to a strong illumination of the island-like elevation in the mid foreground with a chapel and a cross, which is certainly also motivated by content. The left half of the picture is dominated by Momper's typical rugged rock formations crowned by castles, while the viewer's gaze is led far into the distance in the right half of the picture and in the centre, to where the landscape seems to almost dissolve in light blue hues.
As in most of Momper's landscapes, the figures in the present work were also painted by another artist. Ertz suggests that in this work it was Momper's Antwerp colleague Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573-1647) who was responsible for the figural motifs, which include a finely painted peasant couple in the lower left corner of the image as well as an original motif of a man carrying another piggyback through the river.

Certificate

Walther Bernt, Munich, 7.7.1969 (copy of the certificate).

Provenance

Auktion Lepke, Berlin, 21.3.1934, lot 669. – Bavarian private collection. – Lempertz auction 505, Cologne, 27.-29.11.1969, lot 146. – G. Cramer art dealers, The Hague. – 1974 private collection, Baden-Württemberg.

Literature

Klaus Ertz: Josse de Momper der Jüngere (1564-1635). Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Freren 1986, p. 462, no. 19, illus. p. 330.