LOT DETAILS
Materials:
oil on oak panel
Size Notes:
27.5 x 37
Description:
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Markings:
The elevated viewpoint the tall and slightly fantastic rock formations receding diagonally into the distance and the more verdant landscape facing them are all characteristic features of Met de Bles mature style. A Landscape with the Good Samaritan in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna for example is of similar size and composed along similar lines to the present painting.4 As Serck and Toussaint have both observed details of the central section of the landscape in this panel including the ruined colonnaded buildings with a chapel glimpsed through trees and a caravan approaching a distant obelisk and rounded tower beyond are all to be found in a larger panel of a Landscape with Isaac blessing Jacob today in the Ferdinandeum Museum in Innsbruck.5 The pair of pilgrims in the centre foreground is also a motif common to both paintings. Both scholars also observe an overall awareness of the landscape in Joachim Patinirs Penitence of Saint Jerome of around 151215 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York but this is at best general rather than particular.6 Many of De Bles compositions are known in several versions suggesting that he had an active workshop or following but the present panel appears to be the only extant example of this design. Since none of his works are signed or dated it is hazardous to try and construct a chronology of his work which seems to have maintained a remarkable stylistic consistency.
Exhibited:
Namur, Muse des Arts Anciens du Namurois, Autour de Henri Bles, 13 May 1 November 2000,no. 39.
Literature:
L. Serck, Isaac bnissant Jacob, un paysage de Henri Bles au Muse dInnsbruck, in Kunsthistorisches Jaarbuch Graz, 1982, p. 186, plate LXI;; L. Serck, Henri Bles et la peinture de paysage dans les pays-bas mridionaux avant Bruegel,1990, pp. 300, 102728;; J. Toussaint, Autour de Henri Bles, exh. cat., Namur 2000, p. 234, no. 39, reproduced p. 235.
Provenance:
Count Bulow, Hamburg;; Ramon Villalta de Berenguer;; A. Warmuth, Hamburg;; Anonymous sale (The Property of a Gentleman), London, Sothebys, 10 December 1980, lot 23;; Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christies, 8 November, 1999, lot 115;; With Galerie de Jonckheere, Paris;; Probably from whom acquired by the father of the presentowners.