Provenance:
De Jonckheere Gallery 1989;
Private collection.
Inspired by the Hunters in the Snow or The Bird Trap by Pieter Brueghel, numerous painters from Antwerp turned their hand to...
read more Provenance:
De Jonckheere Gallery 1989;
Private collection.
Inspired by the Hunters in the Snow or The Bird Trap by Pieter Brueghel, numerous painters from Antwerp turned their hand to painting winter scenes at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century. Given Abel Grimmer’s taste for portraying the seasons and the cycle of the months, it is hardly surprising that this painter became one of the greatest specialists.
His stylisation of the forms and the introduction of powerful colours give his winters a special and fundamentally personal atmosphere, overflowing with poetry and filled with humanity. In this particular painting , Abel Grimmer paints two stories by developing Joseph’s dream on the left, in which the angel of the Lord appears to him to tell him to flee to Egypt. On the right-hand side, we are shown the flight of the Holy Family where Mary, carried on the back of a donkey, holding the Christ Child in her arms, journeys with Joseph far from the village. These scenes are confined to the panel’s two extremities, leaving an opening for a magnificent panorama. These biblical episodes taken from the New Testament are quite naturally transposed into a snowy landscape bathed in white and grey, and punctuated here and there with several bright highlights of red, green and yellow, just like Joseph’s cape. The lightness of the lines and the simplification of the drawing particularly stand out owing to the succession of flat tints in the foreground, which allow the eye to delicately slip towards the opening of the sky. The landscape is composed of a vast frozen lake (or perhaps a river) on which the locals are skating. Mountains, hills, towns and fortresses complete this particularly harmonious ensemble.
According to tradition, Joseph’s Dream is an allegorical portrayal of the month of January. The composition and the delicate colours in our version resemble the work in the museum in Philadelphia and the museum in ‘S Hertogenbosch . An identical painting dated 1592, which has now disappeared, also featured in the cycle of the months in the church of Notre Dame de Montfaucon.
Magnificently transposed into a universe close to Renaissance Flanders, the biblical scene melts into a landscape brimming with details and hearty anecdotes. Our version is undoubtedly among the most accomplished: the brightness of the sky and the great beauty of the landscape, not to mention the refinement of the characters, make this a choice piece in the painter’s body of work. This delightful Winter Landscape with the Flight to Egypt and Joseph’s Dream adds to the relatively limited body of work signed and dated by the painter. Resolutely modern through the use of these characteristic great flat tints, this painting will delight the most demanding collectors of a genre that fully symbolises all the richness of Flemish painting: the winter landscape.
Circa 1570 - Antwerp - 1618
Abel Grimmer, a painter from Antwerp, was the son of the landscape-painter Jacob Grimmer, with whom he carried out an apprenticeship before acceptance as a Master of...
read moreCirca 1570 - Antwerp - 1618
Abel Grimmer, a painter from Antwerp, was the son of the landscape-painter Jacob Grimmer, with whom he carried out an apprenticeship before acceptance as a Master of the Guild of the Painters of Saint Luke in 1592.
He was the specialist of series devoted to the Four Seasons and Twelve Months, which resemble panel transpositions of miniaturist calendars.
He was a contemporary of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and, like him, though in a highly personal fashion, interpreted certain engravings and models designed by Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Hans Bol. He thus remained deeply attached to the spirit and rather archaic conception of the XVI century.
He is characterized by strict, precise graphics, a synthetic vision of nature following in the foot-path of the primitives and miniature painters, a composition with schematic lines, and great subtility in the choice and juxtaposition of the tones.
If we hardly knew the extent of his work, it may be said of him that he “simplified nature with a charming, poetic naivity, together with a great mastery of workmanship”. His pictorial style, which combines a highly personal realism of the landscape with a stylisation of nature and architectures, today appears strangely modern to us.
