(1568-1625)
A landscape with the Flight to Egypt, pen and brown ink, watercolour, on laid paper, framing lines in pen and brown ink, 18,5 x 18,7 cm, mounted, unframed, (Sch)

Provenance:
Collection William Bateson (1861-1926), London, Lugt 2604a; Auction sale Sotheby's, London, 23/24th April, 1929, lot 234 (as Roelant Savery); European private collection.

Literature:
Wolfgang Wegner, Die Niederländischen Handzeichnungen des 15. - 18. Jahrhunderts. Staatliche Graphische Collection München, Munich 1973, No. 498; Klaus Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, Lingen 2008-2018, No. 243. The present drawing goes back to a painting by Jan Breughel the Elder (and workshop) in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (Inv. Nr. 2876; Ertz 2008/10, No. 243).

A drawing with the same composition by Jan Brueghel is preserved in the Graphic Collection of Munich (Inv. Nr. 1362; Wegner 1973, No. 498). Compared to the Munich drawing the leaves of the trees and the landscape background with the rock at the left margin in the present study are rendered in a summary manner. Even the group of figures is less distinctly elaborated than in the Munich sheet. The similarities of the two compositions indicate that the artist must have been acquainted with the painting and the drawing by Jan Brueghel. He may have been active in the circle of Breughel around 1600.