Wooded Landscape with a Wildfowler by a Stream

Entry

The present work was selected by the museum from the Butôt collection as a prospective bequest in 1993.² It is accepted that the indistinct inscription and date 1646 are authentic, although the area in the foreground, centre, and left, appears not to be worked up. The initials provided the basis for an attribution to Adriaen van Stalbemt,³ which was already questioned in 1972,⁴ and rejected by Bol in 1981.⁵ The recent attribution to the monogrammist I.V.S. should be modified, however, as only the letters ‘V.S.’ are properly legible and they are not in ligature. As yet no other painting by this minor hand with a surname beginning with the letter ‘S’ has been identified; so the work is listed as by an unknown Antwerp artist.

Although the hunter connects most obviously with the kneeling shooter in the engraved Forest Landscape by Aegidius Sadeler (c. 1570-1629) after Roelant Savery (1576-1639) of 1609-12,⁶ the general ethos of the work seems to be that of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) rather than any other independent landscapist active in Antwerp – the not-exclusive connection with that city being afforded by the Antwerp coat of arms branded on the reverse.⁷

Rubens’s influence was pointed out in 1973,⁸ and although the present artist only feebly conveys it, several characteristics may derive from Rubens’s art as transmitted through the engravings of Schelte Adamsz Bolswert (1584/1588-1659). These were most likely already available by 1646.⁹ The stream twisting round a far wooded bank framed by foreground trees connects with the Wooded Landscape with Two Milkmaids (Vaduz-Vienna, The Princely Collections) and engraved as one of the ‘Small Landscapes’.¹⁰ The prominent, pollarded stump, the reflection of trees in the water and the play of sunlight on the tree trunks may also result from a study of these engraved landscapes.

Gregory Martin, 2022