Josse de Momper

Josse de Momper
1564-1635
Mountainous River Landscape with Travelers Approaching a Bridge
1607
Pen and brown ink and watercolor over black chalk, on paper.
10 1/8 x 15 3/8 inches (257 x 390 mm)
Purchased on the Charles A. Ryskamp Fund and as the gift of the Cremer Foundation and the Henfield Foundation
2004.32
Notes: 

A landscape painter and draftsman whose work was collected in his own time, Joos de Momper was the outstanding member of a family of artists. He trained with his father, dean of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke, and traveled to Italy in the 1580s. De Momper's work belongs to the transitional period between late sixteenth-century Mannerism and the beginnings of realism in the early seventeenth century. The first drawing by the artist to enter the collection, it strengthens our holdings of Northern landscape before the age of Rubens, joining works by Paul Bril, Hendrik Goltzius, Jacques de Gheyn, and Jan Bruegel.

Inscription: 

Signed and dated on the bridge, "1607 / Joes de Momp"

Provenance: 
John MacGowan (Lugt 1496); William Esdaile (Lugt 2617; his inscriptions on verso, 1834 WE 32x / J-de Momper); his sale, Christie's, London, 22 June 1840, part of lot 655; Mathias Komor, New York (Lugt S. 1882a); sale, Sotheby's, London, 8 July 2004, lot 68, repr. in color.
Associated names: 

MacGowan, John, -1803, former owner.
Esdaile, William, 1758-1837, former owner.
Komor, Mathias, 1909-1984, former owner.

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