Pieter Brueghel d. J.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger Winter village landscape with the Swan Inn Oil on wood (parquetted). 47 x 63 cm. Signed and dated lower right: P. Breughel 1620. Provenance Gallery Scheidwimmer, Munich, 1970 - German private collection. Literature Klaus Ertz: Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Lingen 1988/2000, vol. II, p. 828, no. E1148, ill. 634. Among the sons of the famous peasant Brueghel, Pieter Brueghel the Younger was not only the eldest but also the one who most effectively continued his father's genre and, as Klaus Ertz has noted, thus contributed to the spread of his fame. He was only five years old when his important father died, so Pieter the Younger did not learn the profession of painter from him, but probably from Gillis van Coninxloo. However, the decisive starting point for his work, the most important source of inspiration for his motifs and style, always remained the work left behind by his father, especially the graphic works. Most of his father's paintings, which were already in great demand at the time, were already in collections outside Flanders. One of the greatest collectors of Pieter Brueghel the Elder's works at the time was Emperor Rudolf II. Our painting is also inconceivable without this source, as it seems to echo the magnificent Month of January from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, painted 50 years earlier: the dark latticework of the leafless trees, the pale winter light, the frozen water, the blankets of snow on the roofs, the peasant figures - all elements are already present in this masterpiece. However, the younger artist's composition is somewhat more detailed and the purely genre character of his painting is more pronounced. From a slightly elevated position, the viewer looks out over a wintry village along a frozen stream. On the left is an unusual central building, which can be recognized by its sign as the Gasthaus zum Schwan. On the other side of the stream, snow-covered houses huddle close together. A solitary figure can be seen here and there, while two small groups of figures catch the eye in the foreground, including a quarrelling peasant couple on the left and two lansquenets with their dogs on the ice. Klaus Ertz lists a total of four versions of this composition, which differ only slightly from one another. They were all painted in the early 1620s, with our painting, dated 1620, being the earliest (K. Ertz, op. cit., nos. 1149, 1150 and 1151).