Maerten Ryckaert and Collaborators

Pierre André Joseph Knyff (1713-1784), Antwerp;

His estate sale, Antwerp, Grange, 18 July 1785, lot 219 (as "H. van Baelen, P. Gysels & Breugel de Velours");

Where acquired by "Van Meirlen" for 62 florins;

Dr. Meurer, Wiesbaden;

By whose estate sold ("Sammlung Herr Dr. Meurer, Wiesbaden"), Berlin, Rudoph Lepke, 26 February 1918, lot 32 (as Jan Brueghel the Elder and J. Rottenhammer);

Anonymous sale, Berlin, Rudolph Lepke, 24 February 1926, lot 87 (as Jan Brueghel the Elder and Johann Rottenhammer);

Private collection, New York;

By whom anonymously sold ("N.Y. Private Collector"), New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 12 January 1955, lot 32 (as Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hans Rottenhammer);

Where acquired by David and Louise Carter.

 In this large and impressive panel, Apollo has gathered with his nine muses on a rocky plateau at the center of the composition, situated between a river valley and a meadow. An elegant allée of trees behind them leads the viewer's eye beyond them in the distance, while Pegasus is seen on a rock to the right. A group of people dance in a meadow in the distance at right while swans and ducks enliven the foreground.  

This lively and complex work appears to be a collaborative work between two or three artists, a common practice in early-seventeenth-century that allowed landscape, figure, animal, and flower painters to combine their particular specialities within a single work. In this case, the landscape was executed by Maerten Ryckaert, while the elegant, classically proportioned figures have been associated by some scholars with Hendrick van Balen.¹ Such an attribution finds early support in the painting’s description in the 1785 auction catalogue for the estate sale of Pierre André Joseph Knyff, chanoine noble gradué de la cathédrale d’Anvers, where the work was praised as a collaboration between Jan Brueghel the Elder (landscape), Van Balen (figures), and Pieter Gysels (animals):

"Apollo playing the violin, accompanied by the nine Muses, who play all sorts of instruments, near a verdant arbor. In the foreground, one sees water covered here and there with swans and ducks, and in the landscape, goats, rabbits, and herons. To the left is a river filled with boats; its banks are lined with trees and houses. To the right, one glimpses a castle surrounded by water, before which peasants are dancing. The distance ends with mountains. J. Bruegel painted a landscape here, the sites of which are beautifully chosen and offer a pleasing contrast. The beautiful finish, the lightness of the foliage, the charm of the colors, the harmony he has managed to reproduce, equal all his best work in this genre. Pierre Gysels added the animals, which are very well rendered, and Van Baelen, the figures, which are no less meritorious; both prided themselves on not yielding to the landscape painter." (translation of the original French text)

The Collection of David and Louise Carter

David G. Carter and Louise Belknap met at the Met in the museum’s library stacks where she was cataloguing for her first job after graduating as an Art History major from Bryn Mawr. David had a newly established Metropolitan Museum of Art fellowship after completing his doctoral studies at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. His earlier days saw him graduate from Princeton as an Art & Archeology major in a wartime accelerated class, then service as a diplomatic courier during WWII, followed by an MA at Harvard / the Fogg and his doctoral studies at NYU. The subsequent union of David and Louise in 1951 began a lifetime passion for building a superb art collection that they enjoyed surrounding themselves with over their 63 years together. While David came to be known as a Dutch & Flemish scholar with a specialty in Rembrandt, his was also a fine and discerning eye as a connoisseur with deep understanding of artistry and quality when selecting works for their personal collection or as the director of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design and The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (where he nearly doubled the size of the exhibition space during his tenure). Art was the framework for his entire world.

¹ We are grateful to Dr. Luuk Pijl for proposing the attribution of the landscape to Ryckaert.