A village street along a canal

A draftsman of great refinement, Jan Brueghel the Elder mostly drew in pen and brown ink, often adding some brown or blue wash or watercolor. Most of his drawings correspond in subject to the main theme of his œuvre – a slightly idealized vision of Flemish country life. The current example is closely related – especially in the buildings along the village street – to two signed paintings, one at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, dated 1607, and one dated 1609 in a private collection (K. Ertz, with C. Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568- 1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, Lingen, 2008, I, nos. 180, 181, ill.). Because Brueghel’s drawings were often copied by assistants or followers, one has to recognize a certain level of uncertainty about the authorship of many of the sheets associated with his name (see T. Gerszi, L. Wood Ruby and B. Tóth, Jan Brueghel. A Magnificent Draughtsman, exhib. cat., Antwerp, Snijders & Rockox House, 2019-2020; and Stijn Alsteens’s forthcoming review of this catalogue in Master Drawings). While the overall quality of the present sheet argues in favor of an attribution to the artist himself, it should be noted that it is more tightly drawn than other examples in the same technique (see, for instance, exhib. cat., Antwerp, 2019-2020, op. cit., nos. 18, 43, ill.).