Beskrivning: Se även beskrivning i den engelska versionen

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 37: 

Technical notes: The painting’s support consists of
a single piece of fine, dense, plain-weave linen. The original
fabric support has been lined and the tacking edges
trimmed on all sides. Broad cusping is visible along the
top and bottom edges, faintly on the left.
The preparatory layers consist of a thick, brushapplied
chalk ground followed by a light brown imprimatura
that extends to the trimmed edges and completely
obscures the canvas texture.

Paint is applied in opaque and semi-transparent layers,
thinly in the landscape (foreground, rocks, trees and
foliage, distant mountains), more thickly in the sky (with
admixture of lead white), with slight impasto in the lights
(foliage, flesh tones). The light brown imprimatura is
used as a middle tone in the more thinly painted foreground
landscape, where it shows through in places. The
figures – the larger ones in the foreground as well as the
background staffage – are painted over the landscape,
freely executed without prior drawing.

The painting is in very good condition. A layer of old
varnish is present, but only slightly discoloured. Abrasion
is moderate overall. A fine craquelure is visible in the
thickly painted sky and in the flesh tones of the foreground
figures. Retouching along the edges covers abrasion
and losses of ground and paint layers. Scattered
small retouches occur in the landscape and sky, but not in
the figures. The painting underwent conservation treatment
in 1870, 1871 and 1982.

Provenance: KM 1816, no. 405 (as Paul Bril).

Bibliography: NM Cat. 1867, p. 26 (as Paul Bril);
Sander IV, p. 89; NM Cat. 1883, p. 32; Göthe 1887, p.
85 (as anonymous Flemish Master); Göthe 1893, p. 105;
Göthe 1910, pp. 118–119; NM Cat. 1958, p. 103 (as
Alexander Keirincx); NM Cat. 1990, p. 187.

In a clearing in the foreground of a verdant bucolic
landscape, dominated by a tall central tree in full
foliage, a gay company of nymphs and satyrs cavort,
dancing and making music, while a small satyr boy
relieves himself nearby. Offering a contrast with the
low-lying darkened foreground and framing rocky
outcropping on the left-hand side, the lighted, atmospheric
middle ground features a pond or stream, with
further tiny figures of nymphs and satyrs disporting
themselves in its placid waters or resting on the sandy
banks. The colours of the landscape are richly and
subtly variegated, the whole unified by a soft greenish
light. On the right-hand side is a hazy view of bluish
mountains in the far distance.

The painting entered the collection in the early 19th
century as a work attributed to Paul Bril, but was later,
erroneously, reattributed to the Dutch landscapist
Alexander Keirincx. Keirincx’s distinctive, mannered
treatment of rhythmically undulating trees with decorative,
pendulous foliage is, however, quite unlike the
type of the monumental central tree with soft, cottonwool
foliage in the present picture. Instead, this
atmospheric landscape seems clearly derived from the
more “naturalistic” late examples of Bril’s idyllic pond
landscapes, such as the Diana and Callisto in London
(The National Gallery),1 the Landscape with Nymphs
and Satyrs of 1623 in Oberlin, Ohio (Allen Memorial
Art Museum),2 and the Landscape with Tobias and the
Angel of 1624 (formerly Dresden, Gemäldegalerie
Alte Meister),3 that present a blend of Flemish and
Italian traditions, influenced as much by the classical
landscapes of Girolamo Muziano and Annibale Carracci,
as by the new poetic landscape vision introduced,
in the early 1600s, by the Italianate German
painter Adam Elsheimer.

With the emancipation of distinct genres of painting
in the course of the 16th century, collaborations
between independent masters became a common practice,
especially in the domain of landscape painting. Bril
himself is known to have frequently collaborated with
different figure painters, creating in the midst of his
landscapes a small stage, as it were, for the staffage to be
filled in by another hand.4 Similarly, all the figures in
the Stockholm painting – including the proportionately
larger ones of a dancing nymph with fluttering drapery
and the swarthy satyrs in the immediate foreground –
were added after the landscape had been painted (see
Technical Notes). They can be attributed to the eclectic
Flemish painter Adriaen van Stalbemt by comparison
with those in his signed works such as the Bril-influenced
Drunkenness of Bacchus (formerly Paris, Galerie
Heim-Gairac, 1953),5 and the Triumph of David of
1618–1619 in Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado), a
collaborative work co-signed with Pieter Brueghel II.6
While no Italian sojourn is documented for Stalbemt,
his beginnings as an artist are shrouded in mystery and
many of his earlier pictures reveal strong influences of
Elsheimer as well as Bril.7 The addition of the figures to
the present landscape could provide an argument for a
hypothetical Italian sojourn of the artist – which would
have had to take place prior to his enrolment in the
Antwerp painters’ guild, at the age of 29, in 1609 −
where he would have come into contact with the influential
Roman artistic circle that included such Northern
artists as Bril, Elsheimer and Jan Brueghel I.

CF
1 Oil on wood, 49.5 x 72.4 cm, probably 1620s, London, The National
Gallery, Sir Claude Phillips Bequest 1924, inv. no. 4029.
2 Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 103.2 cm, signed and dated “1623”, Oberlin, Ohio,
Allen Memorial Art Museum, inv. no. 53.257; for which see Stechow
1954–1955; Faggin 1965, pp. 24, 33, no. 67; Salerno 1977–1980, I, pp. 16,
28, fig. 220; III, p. 1005, n. 52; Boston/Toledo, Ohio, 1993/94, pp.
470–471 no. 85, illus.
3 Oil on canvas, 76.5 x 101 cm, signed and dated “1624”, formerly Dresden,
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, inv. no. 861; for which see Stechow
1954–1955, p. 29, fig. 5; and Faggin 1965, p. 31, no. 24.
4 See Pijl 1998.
5 Oil on wood, 54.5 x 74.5 cm, formerly Paris, Galerie Heim-Gairac, 1953
(cat. 1953, no. 39, fig. 7); see Andrews 1973, p. 305; and a photograph on
file at the RKD, The Hague.
6 Oil on wood, 88 x 216 cm, signed “P. Breughel Fe. 1618” and “AV
STALBEMT Fe. Ao 1619”, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv.
no.1782; for which see Andrews 1973, pp. 302–305, fig. 51; and Díaz
Padrón 2003,
7 See Andrews 1973, esp. p. 306 [End]

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Paul Bril | Landskap med satyrer och nymfer | Nationalmuseum