English: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 50:

Technical notes: The slightly convex oak panel consists of a single radial board with a vertical grain. The panel has been thinned. The original oval panel has been fashioned into a rectangular format through the addition of triangular wood inserts (poplar) at the four corners. The panel has been reinforced on the back with square pieces of wood at the corners and thin wood strips attached to the beveled edges (those on the top and bottom are lost). The top and bottom edges have been slightly trimmed. Exposed worm tunnels are visible on the back, concentrated to a “moon ring” vertically at right of centre. Dendrochronological examination and analysis have determined a felling date for the tree between c. 1614 and 1624. The wood originates from the Baltic region. Under the assumption of a median of 15 sapwood rings and a minimum of 2 years for seasoning of the wood, the most plausible date for use of the panel would be 1622 or later

Paint is applied over an off-white ground in thin, opaque and translucent layers with low, fine brushmarking... The ground is visible through areas of moderate abrasion in the sky. Examination of the painting with infrared reflectography revealed fairly extensive underdrawing in a dry medium, a quickly executed sketch, more agitated and oblique than the final composition. Repaint covers the attached pieces of wood at the four corners of the panel. Scattered small losses of paint have been retouched, Abrasion is moderate throughout. An aged varnish layer is present. The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1986.

Provenance: Transferred in 1984.

Bibliography: NM Bulletin 9, no. 1 (1985), p. 6; NM Cat. 1990, p. 59 (as manner of Jan Brueghel I). This painting is a faithful early, probably 17th-century, copy of an original, signed and dated 16[4]1, now in a private collection (formerly Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie), which Ertz attributed to Jan Brueghel II.1 Another copy, according to Ertz an autograph replica, is at Rhede, Coll. Fürst zu Salm-Salm.2 The painting is signed in monogram, but it has not been possible to identify the artist who painted the copy. This small, unassuming genre scene, showing a peasant leading his horses away from a village inn, is closely related to the work of Jan Brueghel I. Indeed, each single motif, the inn, the carts left outside, the horses being led away, might be derived from one of the artist’s many outdoor genre scenes, such as the Village Street of 1603 (Zürich, priv. coll.) or the many drawings and paintings of contemporary Flemish village life produced between 1605 and 1615. CF

1 Oil on wood, circular panel, 18 cm in diameter, formerly in Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 906; for which see Dresden Cat. 1902, p. 295; Ebert 1963, pp. 74–75, no. 906; and Ertz 1984, p. 34, cat. no. 77, colour pl. 17. 2 Oil on wood, circular panel, 18.5 cm in diameter, Rhede, Coll. Fürst zu

Salm-Salm; for which see Ertz 1984, cat. no. 78, illus.[End]