Lot 3012* - A210 Tableaux de Maîtres Anciens - vendredi, 20. septembre 2024, 14h00
MARTEN VAN CLEVE the Elder
(1527 Antwerp 1581)
Saint George's Fair in a village.
Oil on panel.
76 × 107 cm.
Provenance:
- With Galerie Terry-Engell, London, before 1987.
- Sale Christie's, New York, 12.1.1996, Lot 58.
- European private collection.
Literature:
- Georges Marlier: Pierre Brueghel le Jeune, Brussels 1969, p. 455.
- Jan Briels: Vlaamse schilders in de Noordelijke Nederlanden in het begin van de Gouden Eeuw, Antwerp 1987, p. 118, colour plate 134 (as Hans Bol).
- Georges G. de Jonckheere: Le paysage dans la peinture Flamande de 1500 à 1750, Paris 1996, colour plate p. 179 (as Hans Bol).
- Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz: Marten van Cleve 1524-1581, Lingen 2014, pp. 148–149, cat. no. 36.
In the centre of a village, a colourful and diverse crowd has gathered to enjoy an outdoor fair. The celebration is in full swing: on the left, one group dances exuberantly on the meadow to the sound of bagpipes, while others enjoy food and drink and, in the centre ground, a heated argument takes place. Farmers from neighbouring communities and jesters' guilds arrive in carts known as ‘Mallewagen’. A jester in the guise of Till Eulenspiegel with a yellow jester's robe and cap with donkey ears is trying to catch a child with a wooden hoop in the centre of the picture. On the right in the foreground, a group of genteel men and women stroll along and watch the merriment. A flag with a depiction of St George dressed in armour flies prominently above the house on the right.
The theme of St George's Fair was one of the most popular subjects in Flemish painting of the 16th century. It originally referred to a festival held on the anniversary of the foundation of a church and in honour of the patron saint, and was accompanied by feasting, dancing and competitions of all kinds. In Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, this genre further developed a theme that was present on a smaller scale in the calendars of illuminated manuscripts of the late Middle Ages.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569) was the principal early exponent of large paintings of fairs, for example with his ‘Wedding Dance’ dated 1566, which is in the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan (inv. no. 30.374, c. 1566, oil on panel, 119.4 x 157.5 cm). Most later works by Bruegel and his followers adopted the slightly higher viewpoint that Bruegel had developed for other motifs and which is also used in this painting. The works of Marten van Cleve played a key role in the dissemination of the pictorial ideas of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his son Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564–1636). While Brueghel's depictions of peasant life definitely inspired Marten van Cleve, this composition is clearly van Cleve’s own.
Marten van Cleve employed this theme, which was very popular in his day, in several works from 1551 onwards and increasingly in multi-figure compositions like this one in the 1570s until 1581, the year of his death (see Ertz 2014, p. 35). The earlier attribution to Hans Bol of some of these works is based on an expert opinion by Max J. Friedländer from 1950, but this was subsequently rejected by Kostyshyn and Ertz (see Ertz 2014, p. 151 under cat. no. 39).
Marten van Cleve became a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp between 1551 and 1552, at the same time as Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569). He worked for Frans Floris (1519–1570) from 1553 to 1555 before opening his own studio in 1556. He specialised in genre and landscape depictions, mainly featuring rural wedding scenes, fairs and festivals, and brawls involving peasants and soldiers. These also show his affinity with Pieter Bruegel the Elder, although he possesses his own independent style of painting.
With its wealth of detail, this exceptionally fine depiction of the theme of the village fair is a rare example of the art of Bruegel’s contemporary, Marten van Cleve.
The theme of St George's Fair was one of the most popular subjects in Flemish painting of the 16th century. It originally referred to a festival held on the anniversary of the foundation of a church and in honour of the patron saint, and was accompanied by feasting, dancing and competitions of all kinds. In Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, this genre further developed a theme that was present on a smaller scale in the calendars of illuminated manuscripts of the late Middle Ages.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569) was the principal early exponent of large paintings of fairs, for example with his ‘Wedding Dance’ dated 1566, which is in the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan (inv. no. 30.374, c. 1566, oil on panel, 119.4 x 157.5 cm). Most later works by Bruegel and his followers adopted the slightly higher viewpoint that Bruegel had developed for other motifs and which is also used in this painting. The works of Marten van Cleve played a key role in the dissemination of the pictorial ideas of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his son Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564–1636). While Brueghel's depictions of peasant life definitely inspired Marten van Cleve, this composition is clearly van Cleve’s own.
Marten van Cleve employed this theme, which was very popular in his day, in several works from 1551 onwards and increasingly in multi-figure compositions like this one in the 1570s until 1581, the year of his death (see Ertz 2014, p. 35). The earlier attribution to Hans Bol of some of these works is based on an expert opinion by Max J. Friedländer from 1950, but this was subsequently rejected by Kostyshyn and Ertz (see Ertz 2014, p. 151 under cat. no. 39).
Marten van Cleve became a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp between 1551 and 1552, at the same time as Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569). He worked for Frans Floris (1519–1570) from 1553 to 1555 before opening his own studio in 1556. He specialised in genre and landscape depictions, mainly featuring rural wedding scenes, fairs and festivals, and brawls involving peasants and soldiers. These also show his affinity with Pieter Bruegel the Elder, although he possesses his own independent style of painting.
With its wealth of detail, this exceptionally fine depiction of the theme of the village fair is a rare example of the art of Bruegel’s contemporary, Marten van Cleve.
CHF 250 000 / 350 000 | (€ 257 730 / 360 820)