Lot 1545 D α

The present work combines a landscape by the Flemish artist Lucas van Uden, a collaborator in the studio of Rubens, with a game still life in the foreground painted by Jan Brueghel the Younger. As yet, no documentary evidence for such a collaboration between these two artists has emerged, and alongside one further work in a Belgian private collection, this is the only piece on which the two are known to have collaborated. The Belgian work depicts a similar wooded landscape with a panoramic view in the distance and almost identical game in the foreground, but in a different composition. Klaus Ertz has confirmed the various depictions of animals to be based on models devised by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Frans Snyders. The combination of a landscape with animals “as the sole protagonists of a painting” was an innovation at this time (Ertz op. cit., p. 77). In the works of Jan Brueghel the Elder, the artist's father, animal still lifes such as this were always embedded into biblical or mythological scenes.
The present work can boast an interesting provenance, having belonged to the important old masters collection of Edward Habich (1818-1898) from Kassel until 1892. His collection of 166 old master paintings was sold by Lempertz in 1892. However, the auction did not take place as usual in Cologne, being instead held in the “great hall of the art gallery in Cassel”. With the support of Emperor Wilhelm II, the painting gallery in Kassel was able to purchase seventeen works for its collection before the auction. The National Gallery in London purchased 13 works from the collection, and they were also able to subsequently secure a piece by Lucas Cranach the Elder from this auction in 1926.