Jan Brueghel the Elder

With Bernard Houthakker, Amsterdam, Master Drawings, 1973, cat. 8;

sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 12 November 1990, lot 61 (as Attributed to Jan Brueghel the Elder);

with Bernard Houthakker, Amsterdam, 1995,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007, no. 28 (entry by Stacey Sell)

Son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c 1525/30-1569), Jan Brueghel the Elder¹ followed in his father’s illustrious footsteps as a painter, but unlike his brother Pieter the Younger (1564/65-1637/38), his style developed in a somewhat different direction. Though Jan clearly absorbed much from his father’s style, his own paintings were generally more minute and precise in handling, and often painted on copper. Such was the refinement of his brushwork that he became known as ‘Velvet Brueghel’. In another departure from family precedent, Jan also painted flower pieces, as well as landscapes, with or without biblical subjects.

In the realm of drawings, the stylistic parallels with his father’s works are in some ways closer. Jan’s penwork is typically very fine and rather careful, yet still lively and atmospheric. Some drawings, like the present work, are clearly made simply as studies of motifs that might later be useful in a painting, but he also made much more finished and complete landscape drawings, sometimes worked up with blue wash, which were presumably made for sale. These finished drawings seem to have been very popular with collectors, as they often exist in multiple versions and copies. Indeed, there has sometimes been confusion regarding the attribution of some drawings of that type, but fortunately we now have for the first time a good, clear published guide to Jan Brueghel’s drawings, their style and their function, in the form of the excellent catalogue, by Louisa Wood Ruby and Teréz Gerszi, of the recent exhibition devoted to his drawings.²

More spontaneous studies such as this pose fewer attributional problems, as the artist’s personal drawing style comes through very clearly, and sketches like this were also less attractive to copyists. Here, Brueghel studies a typical post mill of a type that appears in many of his landscapes, usually perched on the top of a low hill, the better to catch the wind. The mill seen here does not, though, precisely correspond with any in a surviving painting by the artist, but as Stacey Sell has pointed out (see Exhibited), it is very close to one seen in a finished drawing that exists in three versions, so may have served as a preparatory study for the prime version of that larger, drawn composition.³   

^1.For some reason, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s name has traditionally been written without the letter h that is used when writing the names of his sons, and of subsequent generations of the family.

^2.Jan Brueghel - A Magnificent Draughtsman, exh. cat., Antwerp, Snijders&Rockox House, 2019-20

^3.For details of all three, see M. Schapelhouman, Netherlandish Drawings circa 1600 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1987, no. 17