1026 - Jan van Kessel d. Ä.

Jan van Kessel d. Ä. Jan van Kessel the Elder Bird Paradise Oil on copper. 20 x 30 cm. Signed lower centre: I. V. KESSEL Fecit. Provenance Private collection, Rhineland. Trouble in paradise? On Jan van Kessel's finely painted copper panel, elemental discord reigns in the avian realm. Magnificently composed, the panel gathers a variety of fowl in a single landscape. On the left, in the water before tall reeds, a group of swans, greylag geese, ducks, herons and cranes has come together, thrusting their necks crossly toward the other birds. On the ground to the right sit a splendid peacock with his mate, a turkey and a large flightless bird, forming a sullen little group of their own. Above, in the air and carping down from a branch, are a golden oriole, a barn swallow and two magpies, among other flying birds. Van Kessel at the same time presents an artfully arranged allegory of the elements of water, earth and air, whose coming together, however, proceeds with little harmony. The grandson of Jan Brueghel the Elder, and nephew and pupil of Jan Brueghel the Younger, depicted in his carefully studied fine paintings not only symphonic bird concerts (cf. Ertz, op. cit., cat. nos. 180–185) but also the cacophony of birds. With all these squabbling beaks, one can hardly imagine how it must sound. A variant of the composition on copper, differing in parts, signed and dated 1675, is in the Stadtmuseum Fürth (Burgfarrnbach, inv. no. X 828). We thank Dr Fred G. Meijer, Amsterdam, for confirming the authenticity on the basis of high-resolution photographs.