1564 - Antwerp - 1635
The work of this landscape painter is the crossroads between mannerisme and realist representation of nature. In his eraly works, he was inspired by Pieter Brueghel, before becoming familiar with the Venitian colours of the later works of Tintoretto. His memories of the Alps has a great influence on his work. Like many of his contemporaries, he often devoted himself to the depiction of the four seasons. Joost de Momper draws inspiration from reality for his fantasy landscapes. The rule of the three colour tones – brown-red in the foreground, grey-green in the middle distance and pale blue in the background – enables him to use the atmosphere and the clouds to render a sense of space. At the end of his life, he also painted landscapes of plains.
His landscapes of southern influecne are similar to those of Adam Eisheimer and Paul Bril. The unique tehcnique of this master makes him a precursor of impressionism, whilst the vigour of his composition, dominated by the mind, harmonises with the modern taste for abstraction. Consequentely, this ancient master is highly modern, and his reputation has been growing for almost half a century. He sometimes asked Jan Brueghel the Elder or Sebastian Vranckx to people his landscapes with characters.
