Description
A son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jan traveled in Italy in the 1590s and later enjoyed a successful career in Antwerp, where he eventually became court painter to the Habsburg regents. As a painter, he specialized in floral still lifes and landscapes, sometimes collaborating with his friend Peter Paul Rubens. His drawings, however, are almost exclusively landscapes. Bruegel intended them to be sold as independent works, rather than as preparatory studies for paintings. The date indicated in the lower left corner of this sheet may be correct, but, along with the artist's name it seems to have been added by a later hand.
Provenance
according to Cailleux: bought in 1953 from M. Robert, Nice; [Cailleux, Paris]
Accession Number
1960.27
Medium
pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash and blue watercolor over stylus
Dimensions
Sheet: 19.9 x 31 cm (7 13/16 x 12 3/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Credit Line
Delia E. Holden Fund
Tags
Drawing Baroque (1600–1750) Watercolor Ink Flemish
Background & Context
Background Story
Jan Brueghel (1568-1625), known as Jan Brueghel the Elder or Velvet Brueghel, was a Flemish painter known for his landscapes, still lifes, and cabinet paintings that combine meticulous detail with atmospheric perspective. Landscape with Travelers from 1605 is a pen and wash drawing depicting a landscape with travelers in the manner that Jan Brueghel developed from his father Pieter Bruegel the Elder's landscape tradition, but with greater attention to atmospheric effect and less emphasis on the moralizing narrative that distinguishes his father's work. The 1605 date places this in Jan Brueghel's early maturity, when he was developing the landscape manner that would make him one of the most influential landscape painters of the early 17th century.
Cultural Impact
Jan Brueghel's landscape drawings are important in the history of Flemish landscape painting because they demonstrate the development of atmospheric perspective that would influence landscape painting throughout Europe. Landscape with Travelers shows Jan Brueghel developing the landscape manner that would make him more influential than his father Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the history of landscape painting—the atmospheric perspective and delicate color effects of the drawing anticipate the landscape tradition of the entire 17th century.
Why It Matters
Landscape with Travelers is Jan Brueghel developing the atmospheric landscape tradition: travelers in a landscape rendered with the pen and wash technique and atmospheric perspective that would make him more influential than his father in the history of landscape painting. The 1605 drawing anticipates the landscape tradition of the entire 17th century.
