Joos de Momper

Joos de Momper Mountain landscape with ford Oil on wood (parquet). 51 x 66,5 cm. Expert opinion Walther Bernt, Munich, 7.7.1969 (copy). Provenance Lepke auction, Berlin, 21.3.1934, lot 669. - Bavarian private collection. - 505th Lempertz auction, Cologne, 27-29.11.1969, lot 146. - Art dealer G. Cramer, The Hague. - 1974 Private collection Baden-Württemberg. Literature Klaus Ertz: Josse de Momper the Younger (1564-1635). The paintings with a critical oeuvre catalogue, Freren 1986, p. 462, no. 19, ill. p. 330. Our painting of a mountain landscape with a ford is one of the earliest works by the Flemish landscape painter Joos de Momper. Klaus Ertz dates it to the late 80s of the 16th century and still sees strong echoes of a journey to Italy by the artist in the early and mid 80s, which, though not yet documentable, can be assumed as certain. In addition to the influence of Paul Bril, whose works Momper is likely to have studied in Rome, the strong alternation of light and shadow is also characteristic of the Antwerp painter's early work. In the present painting, this light direction leads to a strong illumination of the island-like elevation in the middle foreground with a chapel and a cross, which is certainly also motivated by content. The left half of the picture is dominated by Momper's typical rugged rock formations with crowning castles, while the viewer's gaze wanders far into the distance in the right half of the picture and in the centre, where the landscape almost seems to dissolve in light blue hues. As in most of Momper's landscapes, the staffage figures in the present painting are by another hand. According to Ertz, it is his Antwerp artist colleague Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573-1647), from whom, among other things, the excellently painted peasant couple in the lower left corner of the picture comes, as well as the original motif of a man carrying another piggyback through the river.