placeholder
CATALOGUE ENTRY

Seascape with a High Cliff

about 1591
Jan Brueghel the Elder
Flemish, 1568–1625
oil on copper
4-11/16 × 4-7/8 in.
(11.9 × 12.4 cm)
The Clowes Collection
2010.40
SEE TECHNICAL EXAMINATION REPORT

Marks, Inscriptions, and Distinguishing Features

None

Entry

With its high horizon line and bluish-green palette, this exquisite painting exemplifies the Flemish landscape tradition in the late sixteenth century. The artist has depicted a winding shoreline that snakes into the distance on the left and is punctuated by distant hilly terrain and a group of trees with a lace-like profile of leaves at the right. Three vessels appear in the distant inlet, while a fishing boat rides the waves in the foreground. Four delicately painted figures stand on a wedge-shaped bank, and a fifth is perched in a mastless craft along the shore. The center middle ground is dominated by a rocky cliff that serves as the primary motif of the landscape. The reflection of this outcropping on the water’s surface further extends its presence, and the almost square format of the painting neatly frames it. The copper support highlights the artist’s detailed touch and the cliffs' complex surfaces. In spite of its high level of technical precision, this work is unsigned and undated.

The painting is now recognized as the earliest known work by Jan Brueghel the Elder. The specialist Klaus Ertz has based his assessment on its close relationship to two unsigned paintings with expanded compositions: Rocky Coastal Inlet with Battle Ship (fig. 1) of about 1592, also on copper, and A Rocky Coastal Scene (fig. 2) of about the same time on panel. Of these two works, the former shows more direct similarities to the Clowes painting, with an almost one-to-one correspondence in certain passages. The fishing boat traveling across the foreground exhibits the same positioning of vessel and sail, contains a similar number of figures gathered into three groups, and even has a figure wearing a red shirt at the helm. The repoussoir trees at the right edge occupy a proportionally similar amount of space, and the silhouette of the leftmost lower branch against the face of the rock echoes that in the Clowes painting. Finally, the arrangement of the figures along the narrow strip of shore beneath the cliff is precisely the same in the two paintings: a pair of figures at right, a single figure to their right, then a fourth figure crouching at the water’s edge. In front of the pair, two fishing boats, one of which is manned, are arranged perpendicular to each other.1 Except for the sandy cove at which fishermen empty their vessels at the right and the large triple-masted ship at the left, Rocky Coastal Inlet with Battle Ship follows very closely Seascape with a High Cliff.

placeholder
Figure 1: Jan Brueghel the Elder (Flemish, 1568–1625), A Rocky Coastal Inlet with Battle Ship, about 1592, oil on copper, 5-29/32 × 7-41/64 in. Private Collection, Germany.
placeholder
Figure 2: Hans II Liefrinck (Netherlandish, 1538–1599), A Rocky Coastal Scene, about 1592, oil on copper, 5-13/16 × 7-15/16 in. Private Collection, Belgium. Photo Courtesy of Bonhams.

In spite of these similarities, the Clowes painting has been attributed to a number of artists. When Mrs. George Henry Alexander Clowes acquired the painting in 1960, it was attributed to Brueghel’s father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (about 1525–1569), one of the foremost Flemish painters (fig. 3) of the sixteenth century. Yet, in the late 1960s when Mark Roskill was preparing his manuscript on the Clowes collection, professor Julius Held opined that the work was by the hand of Bruegel’s second son, Jan, and this theory was adopted by Ian Fraser in 1972.2 Brueghel specialist Klaus Ertz, working from a black-and-white photograph,3 rejected the work as a “weak, reduced” copy after Rocky Coastal Inlet with Battle Ship in his 1979 catalogue raisonné of the artist and in successive publications.4 After viewing the work in person in 1984,5 he revised his opinion and declared that the Clowes painting was the earliest painting by Brueghel’s hand, datable to around 1591, and that the larger Rocky Coastal Inlet with Battle Ship was executed by the painter the following year.6 He has upheld this attribution in all writings subsequent to 1984, citing, in particular, the precision and coloring of the highly detailed scene, the swelling tree trunks at the right edge, and the bizarre jagged rock formation as characteristic of the artist.7 He also cites the painting technique: that of translucent glazes layered to produce an effect of three-dimensionality. In the 2008 exhibition catalogue, he posited that it may even be an unfinished first sketch.8

placeholder
Figure 3: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Flemish, around 1530–1569), Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, around 1560, oil on canvas, 28-15/16 × 44-3/32 in. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels.

The dissenting voices in the attribution to Brueghel have been that of Margarita Russell and Elizabeth Honig. Russell, following M. L. Wurfbain’s reading of the monogram on A Rocky Coastal Scene as “HL (in ligature) FE” and his assignment of the painting to Hans II Liefrinck (1538–1599),9 repositioned the Clowes painting as the work of Hans’s son, Cornelis II Liefrinck (about 1581–after 1640), in 1992. In the constellation of paintings that she considers,10 Russell observes foremost the Northern Netherlandish landscape tradition of the 1560s–1580s that would have informed the art of the Leiden-based Cornelis the Younger: the sea expanding into the distance and rocky terrain descending from the compositions of Joachim Patinir (about 1480–before 1524) or Hans Bol (1534–1593).11 Much of her argument hinges upon the identification of the triple-master in A Rocky Coastal Scene as an antiquated vessel, which is then updated in Rocky Coastal Inlet with Battle Ship. This updating of seafaring technology, combined with variations in style, led Russell to believe that A Rocky Coastal Scene preceded Seascape with a High Cliff. In contrast, Honig, architect of the Jan Brueghel the Elder Complete Catalog database, confirms the attribution of the Clowes painting to Jan in her entry on the work,12 but questions the painting’s authorship in a comment dated 18 July 2015 associated with A Rocky Coastal Inlet with a Battle Ship.13 The opinions of Russell and Honig indicate that the complicated relationship between these three paintings can be interpreted in vastly different ways.

Brueghel, a specialist not only in riverscapes but also in floral still lifes and allegorical paintings executed in collaboration with other artists,14 was highly respected amongst his peers in Antwerp and was celebrated for his landscapes with small figures by the turn of the seventeenth century.15 Born in Brussels and trained first in watercolor painting by his maternal grandmother Mayken Verhulst (about 1520–1600) and then in oils by Pieter Goetkindt (about 1539–1583),16 Brueghel spent the years between 1590 and 1595 in Italy. He is documented in Naples in 1590, in Rome in 1592–94 in the orbit of Paul Bril (1554–1626), and in Milan in 1595 and 1596 before returning to Antwerp in October 1596 and joining the guild the following year.17 He was appointed court painter to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella in 1608; in 1614, Duke Johann Ernst of Saxony visited his studio and that of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). In 1618, the city magistrates of Antwerp commissioned the twelve foremost painters of the city to execute samples of their work for the Archdukes, a project managed by Brueghel. Cardinal Federico Borromeo, a longtime patron of the painter, and Archduchess Isabella served as godparents to Brueghel’s daughter Clara Eugenia in 1623. His elevated position on the European market for art may account for the numerous paintings that imitate his finely rendered works.18

While Brueghel’s oeuvre is typically positioned in relationship to the world landscape,19 foremost in its winding river, mountainous elements, and open sky, all seen from an elevated vantage point and tripartite color scheme, Ertz distinguishes the painter as an innovator in this category of landscape painting through his privileging of the rocky outcropping. By placing it at the center of the composition, rather than relegating it to the perimeters, as his father had done (see fig. 3),20 Brueghel established a new compositional type in landscape painting. This placement, combined with the highly idiosyncratic form of these cliffs—comprising multiple but parallel faces, slightly forward-leaning, with sharp and menacing-looking summits—calls to mind the painter-theorist Karel van Mander’s well-known quotation about Brueghel’s father swallowing up the Alps during his travels and spitting them out onto his paintings upon his return to Antwerp.21 Ertz seems to locate this interest in unusual outcroppings as a natural development in the world landscape tradition in which his father participated, but there are numerous other sources for this motif. The pioneering Patinir incorporated distinctive rocky outcroppings into some of his paintings, as seen in his Landscape with the Destruction of Sodom and Gommorrah (fig. 4).22 Similarly, Bruegel, with his numerous drawings and prints of valleys seen from a high vantage point and with a wide horizon, would have offered ample inspiration for his son’s exploration of this rocky motif.23 One clear source lies in the work of Bril, whose impact upon Brueghel is evident in the surviving copies he made after the work of Paul’s brother Matthijs (1550–1583) that were in Paul’s possession.24 An etching (fig. 5) dated 1590 by Bril himself could have offered inspiration in its rightmost outcropping, with its prominent rear promontory surrounded by shorter, slightly inclined craggy forms. This spectrum of visual material indicates a veritable affinity in the late sixteenth century for dramatic, jagged forms lining waterways.

placeholder
Figure 4: Joachim Patinir (Netherlandish, about 1480–before 1524), Landscape with the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, about 1520, oil on panel, 11-13/16 × 8-55/64 in. Collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Loan: Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed 1948 (former collection Koenigs), Inv. 2312 (OK). Photo Credit: Studio Tromp.
placeholder
Figure 5: Paul Bril (Flemish, 1554–1626), Rocky Coast in Campania with City and Travelers, 1590, etching, 8-17/64 × 11-9/64 in. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-12.465.

Evidence of this appreciation for rocky cliffs was observed by Elizabeth Honig. In Frans II Francken’s Collector’s Shelf (fig. 6) of about 1620–1626, a composition very similar to Seascape with a High Cliff is reproduced at the right edge of the table.25 The presence of the painting within this fictive Wunderkammer is a testament to the high esteem in which it would have been held: not only do the prominent rocks in the composition relate to the many shells that are crowded onto the table, as part of the dazzling naturalia that appealed to early modern collectors, but it also celebrates the Clowes composition as an impressive specimen of artificialia.26 Even as early as the seventeenth century, Brueghel’s Seascape with High Cliffs was lauded as a striking and distinctive contribution to the Flemish landscape tradition.

placeholder
Figure 6: Frans II Francken (Flemish, 1581–1642), Collector’s Shelf, about 1620–1626, oil on panel, 39-49/64 × 56-19/64 in. Quadreria della Società Economica di Chiavari, Chiavari, inv./cat.nr Botti 20. Photo Courtesy Società Economica di Chiavari

Author

Jacquelyn N. Coutré

Provenance

Baron Henri-Marie-Bruno-Joseph-Léon Kervyn de Lettenhove (1856–1928), St. Michel-lez-Bruges and Brussels;

By descent to Colette H. Dawson, Zionsville, Indiana, in 1948;27

Edith Whitehill Clowes, Indianapolis, in 1960;28

The Clowes Fund, Indianapolis, from 1960–2010, and on long-term loan to the Indianapolis Museum of Art since 1971 (C10014);

Given to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, now the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, in 2010.

Exhibitions

Indiana University Museum of Art, Bloomington, 1963, Northern European Painting: The Clowes Fund Collection, no. 27;

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 1997–1998, Pieter Breughel der Jüngere—Jan Brueghel der Ältere: Flämische Malerei um 1600. Tradition und Fortschritt, no. 21.

References

Henry R. Hope, Northern European Painting: The Clowes Fund Collection, exh. cat. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Museum of Art, 1963), no. 27;

A. Ian Fraser, A Catalogue of the Clowes Collection (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1973), 120–21, ill.;

Klaus Ertz, Jan Bruegel der Ältere (1568–1625). Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog (Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 557, under no. 1 (as not Jan Brueghel the Elder);

Klaus Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Elder: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings, exh. cat. (London: Brod Gallery, 1979), unpag., under no. 1 (as not Jan Brueghel the Elder);

Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Bruegel. Une dynastie de peintres, exh. cat. (Brussels: Europalia 80, 1980), 179, under no. 106 (as not Jan Brueghel the Elder);

Klaus Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625) (Cologne: DuMont, 1981), 58, under no. 2 (as not Jan Brueghel the Elder);

Margarita Russell, “Paintings of Coastal Scenes by Hans and Cornelis Liefrinck of Leiden,” The Burlington Magazine 134, no. 1068 (March 1992): 177, 178 ill. (as Cornelis II Liefrinck);

Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz (eds.), Pieter Breughel der Jüngere—Jan Brueghel der Ältere: Flämische Malerei um 1600. Tradition und Fortschritt, exh. cat. (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 1997), no. 21, ill.

Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, eds., Pieter Breughel Il Giovane (1564–1637/8)—Jan Brueghel Il Vecchio (1568–1625). Tradizione e Progresso: una famiglia di pittori fiamminghi tra Cinque e Seicento, exh. cat. (Cremona: Museo Civico Ala Ponzone, 1998), 129, under no. 34, 130, ill.;

Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625). Kristischer Katalog der Gemälde, vol.1, Landschaften mit profanen Themen (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 2008), 229–231, no. 99, ill.

“Brueghel Family: Jan Brueghel the Elder.” The Brueghel Family Database, University of California, Berkeley, https://www.janbrueghel.net/ (accessed February 16, 2018)

Notes

  1. Fiona Beckett’s technical analysis in July 2016 revealed no evidence of a carbon-based underdrawing or underpainting, and no pentimenti, in the Clowes painting. See “Description of Composition Planning” in the Technical Examination Report. ↩︎

  2. Mark Roskill’s manuscript entry on the painting makes reference to a memorandum to Dr. Clowes in the Clowes Archives and to a subsequent oral confirmation of this assessment by Professor Held. Ian Fraser accepted this attribution in a memorandum dated 17 April 1972 and subsequently published the painting as Jan Brueghel the Elder in his catalogue of the Clowes Collection. See A. Ian Fraser, A Catalogue of the Clowes Collection (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1973), 120. ↩︎

  3. As stated in Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, eds., Pieter Breughel der Jüngere—Jan Brueghel der Ältere: Flämische Malerei um 1600. Tradition und Fortschritt, exh. cat. (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 1997), 130. ↩︎

  4. “Schwächere, reduzierte Nachfolgekopie (ohne Kriegsschiff und Vordergrundstaffage) in Indianapolis, Museum of Art, The Clowes Found [sic] Collection, von Julius Held an Jan I gegeben…” See Klaus Ertz, Jan Bruegel der Ältere (1568–1625). Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog (Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 557. This attribution would not have come as a surprise to Mrs. Clowes. A photograph of the painting must have been sent to Ertz as he prepared his catalogue, for a letter from the scholar to the Clowes Fund received 6 November 1978 more generously rejects the painting as a “copy” after Rocky Coastal Inlet with Battle Ship, which was then called Paul Bril but which Ertz considered to be by Jan Brueghel the Elder. See the letter in File C10014 (2010.40), Clowes Registration Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. See also Klaus Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Elder: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings, exh. cat. (London: Brod Gallery, 1979), unpag., under no. 1. See also Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Bruegel. Une dynastie de peintres, exh. cat. (Brussels: Europalia 80, 1980), 179. See also Klaus Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625) (Cologne: DuMont, 1981), 58. ↩︎

  5. As stated in Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, eds., Pieter Breughel der Jüngere—Jan Brueghel der Ältere: Flämische Malerei um 1600. Tradition und Fortschritt, exh. cat. (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 1997), 130. ↩︎

  6. Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, eds., Pieter Breughel der Jüngere—Jan Brueghel der Ältere: Flämische Malerei um 1600. Tradition und Fortschritt, exh. cat. (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 1997), 132. The reorganization of Ertz’s thinking—dating the Clowes painting before the Rocky Coastal Inlet with a Battle Ship—may have been partially influenced by Russell’s article, which appeared in The Burlington Magazine in 1992. See endnote 10. ↩︎

  7. “Der rahmende, sich aus seiner Erderhöhung emporschlängelnde Baumstamm mit der dick anschwellenden, sich nach oben schnell verjüngenden und schliesslich spitz zulaufenden Form ist ebenso typisch wei die in weisser Höhung in vorderster Farbschicht aufgesetzten Blattbüschel oder die bizarren, wild zerklüfteten, in eigenwilligen nackten Formen auswuchernden Felsformationen. All das sind Motive, die sich später an passender Stelle wiederholden.” See Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, eds., Pieter Breughel der Jüngere—Jan Brueghel der Ältere: Flämische Malerei um 1600. Tradition und Fortschritt, exh. cat. (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 1997), 130. ↩︎

  8. Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, vol. 1, Landschaften mit profanen Themen (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 2008), 230. In this entry, he also formally deattributes Rocky Coastal Scene, the authorship of which he had questioned in a footnote in the 1997 catalogue. See Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, vol. 1, Landschaften mit profanen Themen (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 2008), 231, and Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, eds., Pieter Breughel der Jüngere—Jan Brueghel der Ältere: Flämische Malerei um 1600. Tradition und Fortschritt, exh. cat. (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 1997), 132, note 3. The current owner calls it Monogrammist IF. ↩︎

  9. M.L. Wurfbain, Geschildert tot Leyden anno 1626, exh. cat. (Leiden: Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, 1976), 91. ↩︎

  10. Russell also incorporates a painting sold at Christie’s, London, on 13 December 1991, lot 121 into this group. Also painted on copper and measuring 14.6 x 17.8 cm, the painting is given to Cornelis II by Russell. See Margarita Russell, “Paintings of Coastal Scenes by Hans and Cornelis Liefrinck of Leiden,” The Burlington Magazine 134, no. 1068 (March 1992): 177, 178. ↩︎

  11. She also associates the use of copper with the Haarlem-based marine painter Cornelis Vroom (about 1591–1661) in an attempt to further anchor the group of works under consideration within the realm of Holland. However, copper was favored support of the painter Paul Bril (1554–1626), whom Brueghel met during his period in Rome. Russell’s citation of the comments of painter-theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627–1678) about Cornelis II—that he made “colorful seascapes with ingenious rocks”—is an inconclusive piece of evidence. See Margarita Russell, “Paintings of Coastal Scenes by Hans and Cornelis Liefrinck of Leiden,” The Burlington Magazine 134, no. 1068 (March 1992): 178. When compared with the Coastal Landscape with Granite Cliffs of about 1610–20 in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, however, the calligraphy of the waves' crests, the less fantastic articulation of the cliff faces, and the more prosaic articulation of the figures of the Minneapolis painting confirm that the two works are by different hands. ↩︎

  12. See http://janbrueghel.net/janbrueghel/seascape-with-rocks (accessed 15 May 2022). ↩︎

  13. She accepts the Rocky Coastal Inlet with Battle Ship as Brueghel, as supported by the opinion of the Paul Bril specialist Luuk Pijl, and rejects attributions to both Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hans II Liefrinck for the Rocky Coastal Scene. In two particularly astute and related comments in the “Discussion” section on Rocky Coastal Inlet with Battle Ship, Honig quips, “Curious that even Jan’s very earliest painting seems to exist in such a lot of copies and variants” and, “I am going, however, to deattribute also the Indianapolis seascape, or I’m going to put it as a ‘q’ number. God knows who was knocking off Ertz #1, but it wasn’t [only] JB himself.” See http://janbrueghel.net/janbrueghel/rocky-coastal-inlet-with-battle-ship (accessed 15 May 2022). ↩︎

  14. His most prominent pupil was Daniel Seghers (1590–1661), who continued the collaborative garlands of “Flower” Brueghel into the second third of the seventeenth century. ↩︎

  15. Karel van Mander, in his Schilder-boeck (Book of Painters) of 1604, praises him: “is in seer groot achten ghecomen, met te maken Landtschapkens, en seer cleen beeldekens, daer hy een uytnemende fraey handelingh van heeft.” See Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-boeck (Haarlem: Paschier van Wesbusch, 1604), 234r. Cornelius de Bie and Arnold Houbraken would similarly highlight his excellence in this type of landscape painting. See Cornelis de Bie, Het Gulden Cabinet van de Edel Vry Schilderconst (Antwerp: Jan Meyssens and Juliaen van Montfort, 1662), 89 and Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, part 1 (The Hague: J. Swart, C. Boucquet and M. Gaillard, 1753), 85. ↩︎

  16. One wonders if the wet-in-wet application in some passages may have had some precedent in his early practice of watercolor painting. ↩︎

  17. On Brueghel’s life, see Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, vol. 1, Landschaften mit profanen Themen (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 2008), 65–7. ↩︎

  18. Ertz writes that he has reduced the oeuvre of the artist from over 3,000 paintings to approximately 300. See Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, vol. 1, Landschaften mit profanen Themen (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 2008), 28. ↩︎

  19. On the world landscape, see among others, Wolfgang Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Phaidon, 1966), 33–49; Reindert Falkenburg, Joachim Patinir: Landscape as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1988); Walter Gibson, Mirror of the Earth: The World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); and Boudewijn Bakker, Landscape and Religion. From Van Eyck to Rembrandt (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 91–114. ↩︎

  20. See Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, eds., Pieter Breughel der Jüngere—Jan Brueghel der Ältere: Flämische Malerei um 1600. Tradition und Fortschritt, exh. cat. (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 1997), 132, and Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, vol. 1, Landschaften mit profanen Themen (Lingen: Luca Verlag, 2008), 230. Interestingly, if the Clowes painting is indeed the artist’s earliest landscape, he would resort to more conventional compositional structures in his later works, such as A Coastal Landscape with Fisherman Selling their Catch and Jonah Cast Overboard (1595, sold Sotheby’s, London, 5 December 2018, lot 11) and Harbor Scene with Christ Preaching (1597, on loan from a private collection to National Gallery, London). A painting cited by Mark Roskill in his manuscript mentions a comparable landscape in the collection of Lord Hesketh. This painting, no longer considered to be by the master himself, displays the same distinctive rock formation as in the Clowes and related paintings, though in reverse. As in the two paintings just mentioned, this example decenters the rock formation. The Hesketh painting sold at Sotheby’s, London, 3 December 2008, lot 8. ↩︎

  21. The oft-quoted phrase is “In zijn reysen heeft hy veel ghesichten nae t'leven gheconterfeyt, soo datter gheseyt wort, dat hy in d'Alpes wesende, al die berghen en rotsen had in gheswolghen, en t'huys ghecomen op doecken en Penneelen uytghespogen hadde, soo eyghentlijck con hy te desen en ander deelen de Natuere nae volghen.” See Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-Boeck (Haarlem: Paschier van Wesbusch, 1604), 233r. ↩︎

  22. Some art historians seek to associate these rocky outcroppings with landscape features in the real world. Christopher Brown, for example, describes Patinir’s origins in the Dinant region of modern-day Belgium as the source for his dramatic cliffs. See Christopher Brown, Rubens’s Landscapes: Making and Meaning (London: National Gallery, 1996), 13. Similarly, the current owner of A Rocky Coastal Scene has made a connection to rock formations that can be seen in the Cabo Verde Islands west of Mauritania. ↩︎

  23. On Pieter Bruegel’s influence on the next generation of images of coastal landscapes, see Teréz Gerszi, “Pieter Bruegels Einfluss auf die Herausbildung der Niederländischen See- und Küstenlandschaftsdarstellung,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 24 (1982): 143–87. On his Alpine landscapes on paper, see entries 22–35 by Nadine M. Orenstein in Nadine M. Orenstein, ed., Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Drawings and Prints, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 120–36. ↩︎

  24. Carla Hendriks, “The Lives and Work of Matthijs and Paul Bril,” in Carla Hendriks et al., Northern Landscapes on Roman Walls. The Frescoes of Matthijs and Paul Bril (Florence: Centro Di, 2003), 20. ↩︎

  25. See the comment dated 4 February 2015 under “Discussion” at http://janbrueghel.net/janbrueghel/seascape-with-rocks (accessed 15 May 2022). Francken took some liberties with the composition, such as relocating the fishing boat closer to the shore and enlarging the overall dimensions, but the square format correlates closely to Seascape with a High Cliff. ↩︎

  26. Its presence as an artistic achievement is further elevated by the scene of iconoclasm taking place in the right portion of the painting. ↩︎

  27. Upon the death of Baron Henri Kervyn de Lettenhove in 1928, his estate was divided between his wife (died 1934) and one surviving child, the Vicomtesse Roger le Sergeant d’Hendecourt (died 1942). The four children of the latter were minors on the death of their father, two died in 1945, and the estate remained undivided until 1948, when it was inherited by Colette Dawson and her sister. For this family history, see Letter from John W. Dawson to Allen W. Clowes, 23 September 1960, File: Dawson Art Purchase—August 1960, Clowes Registration Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. ↩︎

  28. Sales agreement, 19 August 1960, File C10014, Clowes Registration Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. ↩︎