JAN BRUEGHEL the younger

Artist: unknown

a mouse a turtle a dragonfly a caterpillar beetles and fish

Antwerp 1601 – 1678

Oil on Panel

5 x 6 1/2 inches (12.5 x 16.5 cms)

Jan Brueghel the Younger began his career as a pupil of his famous father Jan ‘Velvet’ Brueghel. From 1622 he travelled extensively in Italy, where he was to meet Sir Anthony van Dyck and Lucas de Wael. Here he also made the acquaintance of Archbishop Borromeo who had been his father’s important patron.

He returned to Antwerp after the death of his father in 1625. This same year he was to take over his father’s workshop and he was also elected a member of the Guild around that time. He married in 1626 and was to have eleven children, five of whom became well known artists (the best known being Abraham and Jan-Baptiste). Apart from occasionally travelling to Paris in the 1650s he remained in Antwerp for the rest of his life.

Jan Brueghel the Younger was to collaborate on other works by his contemporaries including Peter Paul Rubens, Conzales Coques, Jan van Kessel I and Hendrick van Balen as well as his father. His work is often mistaken for that of his father, indeed his technique is very close to that of Velvet Brueghel. Brueghel the Younger is known to have been a very slow and meticulous painter, nevertheless his execution is somewhat looser by comparison and his compositions not as tightly drawn.

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