Please enable JavaScript in your browser.

Peasants in a Wood Going to Market

Peasants in a Wood Going to Market

Object type Drawing
Genre Urban, Common and Peasant Life
Date ca. 1607
Dimensions 18.8 x 29.4 cm
Support Paper
Medium Pen and brown ink with grey and blue wash
Other authorities Bailey/Walker cat. #LOND.BM.13
Location London, England
Collection British Museum
Accession numbers RN 1946,0713.966
Tags Forest, Peasants, Cart, Road
External resources British Museum
Popham 1935, p. 179, nr. 3
18th century to 19th century London William Esdaile
Thomas Fitzroy Fenwick
18th century to 18th century London Sir Thomas Lawrence (lLugt 2445)
Sir Thomas Phillipps
George John Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer (Lugt 1530)
Jun 10 1811 London His sale, Thomas Philipe's, Lot #109 (as "Brueghel (Jan) One - a Flemish woo")John Thane
18th century to 19th century London John Thane
19th century London Samuel Woodburn
Jun 4 1860 London His sale, Christie's, Lot #93 (as "Brueghel - Landscapes, with market carts &c. - tinted," 3 in the lot, b)
1946 London Donated by Count Antoine Seilern
Paige Walker
July 30, 2013

British Museum website: "After the 1607 painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, inv.no.1974.293; a smaller version on copper is in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, inv.no.1895. The two horsemen in the forest at left are not included in the drawing. A preparatory drawing was sold at auction in Leipzig in 1930."

E.A. Honig
August 4, 2014

For the "preparatory drawing" see Winner 1961, fig. 24. I agree that this could have been a design for the general composition, yet the paintings were clearly generated from one another or from some more complete drawing, not from this one -- they repeat the full staffage very exactly from one to the next. What then was the role of a drawing like the Leipzig one?