English: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 34:

Technical notes: The support consists of a single piece of medium-weight, plain-weave linen (lined). The original tacking edges have been trimmed on all sides. Broad cusping is visible on all sides. A c. 1.0 cm wide painted black border is visible along the edges (under the frame).

The preparatory layers consist of a lower reddish orange ground layer followed by an upper grey layer. Paint is applied thinly in mostly opaque layers, with minimal brushmarking and slight impasto in the lights. A layer of old varnish is present, only slightly discoloured. Abrasion is moderate overall. The paint surface is ingrained with dirt. A fine overall craquelure is visible, especially in the sky. Retouching along the edges covers slight losses and abrasion of ground and paint layers. Minor retouching in the sky and foliage covers scattered small losses.

Bibliography: Granberg 1886, p. 171–172 no. 306 (as Daniel Vertangen); Göthe 1887, p. 283 (as Daniel Vertangen); Göthe 1893, p. 341; Göthe 1900, p. 352; Göthe 1910, pp. 368–369; NM Cat. 1958, p. 213 (as Daniel Vertangen); NM Cat. 1990, p. 375 (as Daniel Vertangen).

Tall trees and rocks bracket a grove with a pool and shallow waterfall. The low-lying darkened foreground links the flanking and over-arching silhouettes of the trees and rocks in a single aperture of shadow. Offering a contrast with the foreground, the lighted middle ground features a pool surrounded by rocks and trees of various forms, some in full foliage, others slender and denuded. At the back the trees part, on the right, to offer a glimpse of a distant blue landscape with hills. In the lower left foreground several nymphs and satyrs cavort in or near the pool, while rabbits gather on the right. The colours, like the value contrasts and brushwork, are richly and subtly variegated.

The present painting bears a false signature of Daniel Vertangen, a follower of the Italianate Dutch painter Cornelis van Poelenburch, and has, since the late 19th century, erroneously been regarded as a copy by the Dutch artist after an original by the Flemish- Roman landscapist Paul Bril. The painting is, indeed, an exact replica after a painting by Bril now at The Hague (Mauritshuis),1 but one probably produced by Bril’s workshop. Pijl dates the picture at The Hague to c. 1620.2 Landscape and figures in both pictures are extremely close in the handling. Several of Bril’s easel paintings, like his finished landscape drawings, exist in duplicate; those replicas of his drawings considered to be by his own hand have been termed “copy versions”. 3 Since so many non-autograph copies after Bril’s drawings and paintings exist, one may be inclined to attribute these versions to copyists working in Bril’s studio. However, Pijl has come to the conclusion that Bril himself occasionally produced the same landscape more than once. He has suggested that this parallel activity is not surprising in light of the strong market demand for both Bril’s drawings and his oil paintings: it is less time-consuming to duplicate a composition than to invent a new one and the master might have executed these replicas himself when a commission was too important for studio work to suffice.4

The Hague picture and its Stockholm replica are fine examples of Bril’s mature, late landscapes, which often contain pastoral or bucolic figures and settings and mythological subjects. The theme of the goddess Diana and her nymphs bathing while spied upon by lecherous satyrs was treated by the artist in a closely related picture that was on the Swedish art market in 1939.5 The composition can also be compared with a contemporary work by the artist such as the London Diana and Callisto of c. 1620 (The National Gallery),6 and it anticipates that of the signed Landscape with Nymphs and Satyrs of 1623 in Oberlin, Ohio (Allen Memorial Art Museum).7 CF

1 Oil on canvas, 50 x 63 cm, The Hague, Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen Mauritshuis, on loan from the Instituut Collectie Nederland, Amsterdam, inv. no. NK 3300; see Faggin 1965, no. 3; and Cat. Old Master Paintings. An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst/The Netherlandish Office for the Fine Arts, The Hague 1992, p. 56, no. 329. 2 See his article in Saur Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, 14, 1996, p. 229. 3 Wood Ruby 1999, pp. 28–29. 4 See Pijl in Saur Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, 14, 1996, p. 229; and idem 2000, p. 177. 5 Oil on canvas, 45 x 60 cm, Gothenburg, Matthiesen, 1939; see Faggin 1965, no. 35. 6 Oil on wood, 49.5 x 72.4 cm, London, The National Gallery of Art, inv. no. 4029; see Faggin 1965, no. 40. 7 Oil on wood, 70.5 x 103.2 cm, signed and dated “1623”, Oberlin, Ohio, Allen Memorial Art Museum, inv. no. 53.257; see Faggin 1965, p. 31ff., no. 67; and the Catalogue of European and American Paintings and Sculpture

in the Allen Memorial Art Museum, 1967, p. 24.