Forest Road with Travelers
Object type | Painting |
Genre | Landscape |
Date | 1607 |
Dimensions | 46.4 x 83.2 cm |
Support | Panel |
Medium | Oil |
Signature | BRUEGHEL 1607 |
Our attribution | Jan Brueghel the Elder |
Other authorities | Ertz 2008-10, #64 Ertz 1979, #149 |
Location | New York, NY, United States |
Collection | Metropolitan Museum of Art |
Accession numbers | inv. #1974. 293 |
Tags | Traveling, Dog, Horse, Swine, Forest, Road, Wagon |
External resources | Metropolitan Museum of Art |
Preliminary drawing sold Liepzig 1930; illustrated in Ertz 1979 fig.158.
Another composition that spawned many versions and variants difficult to disentangle. Copy attributed to Jan the Younger in a German private collection (Ertz JBII, cat. #2); Ertz dates this to 1625 when Jan took over father's studio, but if that's true, how did he copy a work dated 1607? It would be more plausible if that painting were simply an earlier studio version. There are also what Ertz in 1979 considered "autograph replicas" and which are actually similarly-structured landscapes with, often, quite different staffage. Here they are: in a Belgian private collection (#156) which I have rejected; Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum (#157), an autograph work which has same landscape but with staffage by Vrancx; Munich, Alte Pinakothek (#158), a somewhat weaker copy with slight variants in staffage; a lost version (#159) that I'm dubious about; and one in a private collection which is my #q160. His 1979 #112 is a related work but not really a "variant" of this one. Works Ertz cites in Warsaw and Maastricht as variants by followers are quite distant from original. There is a mediocre copy in Madrid, Prado, cat. #1885 that Ertz doesn't mention. Several other quite awful copies also exist, photos at RKD; one was in a private collection in Germany in 1927; another on the art market London (Koetser) in 1965. RKD has photo of yet another version in Munich, inv. #13024, as "Jan Brueghel Studio" which might be about right.