English: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 4:

Technical notes: The painting’s support is an oak panel (±0.4–0.8 cm thick) constructed of three horizontal, butt-joined, radial boards with horizontal grain. The panel has been partially thinned, showing horizontal marks from a narrow roughening plane on the back. Bevelling occurs along four edges on the verso. The upper join has been reinforced by strips of a fine linen fabric on the verso. Dendrochronological examination and analysis have determined a felling date for the tree between c. 1613 and 1623. 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 1621 or later.

It is difficult now to definitively conclude that the artist’s signature in black in the lower right corner is authentic: the area is extensively retouched and the first four letters of the signature have become partially obscured by later retouching. The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1993.

Provenance: Robert Berggren, Stockholm, by 1886; bequeathed by Robert Berggren in 1895.

Bibliography: Granberg 1886, p. 159 no. 286; NM Cat. 1958, p. 6 (as Jan van Balen); NM Cat. 1990, p. 10 (as Jan van Balen); Werche 2004, pp. 94, 128 n. 280, 212 under cat. no. A186, fig. 61 (as Jan van Balen).

In a wooded landscape, nymphs fill a horn of plenty with fruit plucked from the trees and handed to them by satyrs, putti and other nymphs. The key to the story depicted here is the scene in the left background, where Hercules can be seen fighting the river god Acheloüs, who appears in the form of a bull. As recounted by Ovid in the Metamorphoses (9.1–9.2), during the banquet Acheloüs lays on for Theseus, the river god tells how he competed with Hercules for the hand of Deianira, the daughter of another river god. During their struggle, Acheloüs first transformed himself into a writing snake and then into a bull. Hercules defeated him, however, by breaking off one of his horns, but, as Acheloüs relates: “This horn the naiads took, filled it with fruit and fragrant flowers and hallowed it. And now the goddess of glad Abundance is enriched with my horn”. No sooner does he say this than one of his nymphs brings to the table a richly filled cornucopia – the second course of the banquet – as depicted in related scenes of The Feast of Acheloüs. This painting is a faithful same-size copy of the original, painted on copper by Antwerp artist Hendrick van Balen I, now in Dresden (Staatliche Gemäldesammlung, Alte Meister).1 Werche (2004) dates Van Balen’s Dresden original, with its voluptuous female nudes, in the decade of the 1620s. The Stockholm copy probably dates to approximately the same period (see Technical Notes), but its poor condition – the painting has been heavily restored and is partially overpainted – makes it impossible at present to comment on the current attribution to the artist’s son and pupil, Jan van Balen, whose signature – possibly spurious – occurs at bottom right.2 CF

1 Oil on copper, 48.5 x 65.5 cm, Dresden, Staatliche Gemäldesammlung, Alte Meister, inv. no. 922; for which see Jost 1963, p. 125; and Werche 2004, cat. no. A186, illus. The verso of the copper plate displays the brand of the City of Antwerp and the personal mark and monogram of the Antwerp coppersmith Peeter Stas. In addition to NM 5237, Werche lists two copies of the Dresden original: 1) “Fest der Pomona”, formerly in Dessau, Schloss Luisium; 2) Jan van Balen?, Summer, oil on wood, 50.5 x 69.5 cm, signed “Balen”, sale, Schloss Ahlden, 16 April 1988, lot 649. 2 This signature, “I bale”, was first reported by Granberg in 1886 (p. 159).

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