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Nymphs Sleeping After the Hunt, Spied on by Satyr (Paris)

Nymphs Sleeping After the Hunt, Spied on by Satyr (Paris)

Object type Painting
Genre Classical Mythology
Date 1620-1621
Dimensions 61.5 x 98.5 cm
Support Panel
Medium Oil
Collaborators Peter Paul Rubens
Our attribution Jan Brueghel the Elder
Other authorities Ertz 2008-10, #355
Ertz 1979, #355
Van Mulders 2000 as Rubens, Brueghel, and Snyders
Location Paris, France
Collection Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature
Accession numbers inv. #68-3-2
Tags Resting, Dog, Rubens, Forest, Nude, Classical, History, Mythological
Esterhazy 1901, pp. 212-14
Müller-Hofstede 1968, pp. 218-19, fig.s 13, 14
Ertz 1979, cat. #355, fig. 471, pp. 394-95, 398, 400, 406
Van Mulders 2000, p. 121
Ertz 2008-10, cat. #355
Paris 1977/78, cat. #132, p. 180
Kassel 2004, cat. #22
Los Angeles/The Hague 2007, #11
Potsdam Collection of Frederick the Great, Sanssouci Palace
1760 Vienna Looted and taken to Vienna
1763 Given to Emmerich Esterhazy by Frederick the Great
Until World War II Esterhazy Collection, Jagdschloss Rede
Zürich Private Collection
1967 Paris Sale
1968 Donated to the Musée de la Chasse
E.A. Honig
August 1, 2012

Copy sold Stockholm (Stockholms Auktionsverk, May 16, 2000, #1434) as circle of Jan the Younger (copper, 48 x 70); copy sold New York (Christie's, May 31 1990, #115) as Jan the Younger (copper, 48.5 x 64). wiki pages for both. the latter was catalogued by Ertz as Jan the Younger, 1984 #242.

Christine Quach
June 9, 2014

Copy sold Szapary sale, Ernst-Museum, Budapest, April 29, 1929, #73 (panel, 64 x 108 cm)

E.A. Honig
December 16, 2015

This is by far the better painting at this museum. It is less densely painted and a great deal of the ground layer is visible: you can see a lot of process really clearly. Rubens must have done his part first but also he did parts of ground, including trees, because the figures are completely integrated in terms of poses, shadowing and so forth. The putto/dogs interaction is also nice and unusual and argues for a good "understanding" between the two players. In some of the dogs you can clearly see the way Jan first drew a sketch form--some are not even really filled in.

Interesting comparison on how Rubens integrates a figure group (the sleeping nymphs) vs. how Brueghel does it with the dogs. Dogs are much more indivuated, linear, cut-outs juxtaposed against one another, at best puzzle pieces. Rubens's figures are a mass in which individuals emerge and then remerge. Note how women are particularly treated like this.

In great condition.

Freedberg, in his review of Ertz, doubted that Rubens did the figures here.