Joos de Momper (1564 – 1635) - A River Landscape

Joos de Momper
Antwerp, 1564 – Antwerp, 1635

A River Landscape with a Castle on a Hill and Travellers

Oil on panel, within a painted oval
H. 43 cm. W. 72,5 cm.

PROVENANCE
Private collection, The Netherlands

LITERATURE
Ertz, K. (1986). Josse de Momper der Jüngere (1564-1635). Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog. Freren: Luca Verlag, p. 122, ill. 85

CATALOGUE NOTE
Two other landscapes within a similar painted oval and of virtually the same dentitions by Joos de Momper II are know: A winter landscape with figures playing games on a frozen river was sold at Christie’s, London, 9 December 2015, as lot nr. 117 (see: Ertz, 1986, p. 108, ill. 63), A mountain Landscape with travellers is kept in the collection of the Groninger Museum, Groningen (inv. nr. 1948-105). Dr. Ertz dates the present work to the early years of the 17th century, shortly after De Momper’s return from Rome to his native city of Antwerp in 1601.

Joos de Momper was one of the foremost Flemish landscape painters between Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens. Brueghels’s influence is clearly evident in many of the Momper’s paintings. He was born in an artistic family of Antwerp and was named after his grandfather. He became master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke at only 17 years old. It assumed that in the 1580s he travelled to Italy to study.

De Momper primarily painted landscapes, the genre for which he was highly regarded during his lifetime. Only a small number are signed and just one is dated. The large output points to substantial workshop with figure painters such as Frans Francken II, Pieter Snayers, Jan Brueghel the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Younger, usually on large mountainous landscapes, whereby the other painters painted the figures and de Momper the landscape. He painted fantasy landscapes, viewed form a high vantage point and employing a conventional Mannerist color transition of brown in the foreground to green and finally blue in the background. His wide panoramas also features groups of small figures.