Object data
oil on copper
support: height 33.7 cm × width 50.5 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Anton Mirou
Hunter and Horsemen on a Wooded Road, with a Village in a Valley beyond
1608
Inscriptions
- signature and date, bottom centre, below the seated villager: MIROU F. / 1608
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar / L. Akerlund, RMA, 27 August 2013
Conservation
- conservator unknown, 1985: treated
Provenance
…; sale, Jonkheer Ulrich W.F. van Panhuys (1806-82, Groningen), Amsterdam (C.F. Roos and C.F. Roos Jr.), 26 September 1882, no. 69, as M.V. Rael, manner of Vinckeboons, fl. 130, to the dealer J.W. Molman;1 acquired for the museum by Victor de Stuers, 1882;2 on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 1999-2011
Object number: SK-A-755
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Anton Mirou (Antwerp 1578 - Frankenthal between 1621-27)
Anton, or more properly Antoine,3 Mirou, a landscape painter was baptized in the Antwerp Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk on 4 May 1578. His family was Protestant and left Antwerp in 1586 to settle in Frankenthal. He was probably apprenticed there to Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1607); and the woman he married in 1602 was probably Coninxloo’s niece. His earliest dated, extant painting is of three years previously. The year of his death is not known; his last dated work is of 17 March 1621 and in April 1627 a record refers to Susanna, his wife, as a widow. His extant painted oeuvre consists of some forty-eight items; most famously he provided drawings for the twenty-six plates engraved by Matthäus Merian I (1593-1650) known as the ‘Schwalbacher Reise’ of 1620.4
REFERENCES
H. Devisscher in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., Basingstoke 1996, 21, pp. 710-11
Entry
This landscape, Anton Mirou’s only extant painting of 1608, recalls the composition of one of 1603 in the Harrach collection, Schloss Rohrau, Austria.5 The buildings and terrain presumably are inspired by the countryside in the Frankenthal area. The following year – 1609 – Mirou made his first dated landscape drawing on site,6 abandoning the formulaic treatment of landscape evident here.
The scene in the foreground is one of social cohesion with a hunter offering game to a seated villager, while another is acknowledged by a well-born horseman.
Gregory Martin, 2022
Literature
E. Mai and H. Vlieghe (eds.), Von Bruegel bis Rubens: Die goldene Jahrhundert der flämischen Malerei, Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum)/Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten)/Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum) 1992-93, p. 446, no. 86.1; J. Diefenbacher, Anton Mirou, 1577-vor 1627: Ein Antwerpener Maler in Frankenthal, Landau 2007, p. 52, no. 1
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 114, no. 965 (476b) (as signed and dated 1633?); 1903, p. 179, no. 1627; 1934, pp. 193-94, no. 1627; 1951, p. 125, no. 1627; 1976, p. 390, no. A 755
Citation
G. Martin, 2022, 'Anton Mirou, Hunter and Horsemen on a Wooded Road, with a Village in a Valley beyond, 1608', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4607
(accessed 10 November 2024 20:35:00).