Landscape with view of a Village

JACOB GRIMMER

Antwerp 1525/26-before 1590

Oil on panel 17,3 x 29 cm.

Provenance
Dutch private collection

Jacob Grimmer was the son of Nicolaas and Elisabeth Cops. The only documentary about his artistic training is his written registration in 1539 under the name
Jaques Grimmer, in the liggeren of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a student of Gabriël Bouwens. He became master of the guild in 1547.

Jacob Grimmer married Lucia van de Wouwer in 1548. Of the four children of this marriage, Abel became an important landscape and architectural painter.
Jacob was principally a painter of landscapes and winter scenes although he also painted some themed works as the Tower of Babel. He often returned to the subject of the Four Seasons or the Twelve Months. His earliest dated work was dated 1546 and the latest works are from 1589.

As was common practice in the Antwerp art sector, Jacob Grimmer often collaborated with other specialists, as Marten van Cleve and Gillis Mostaert, who painted the staffage in his landscapes. As early as 1550, Jacob Grimmer was praised by the famous Italian historian Vasari as one of the best landscape painters of his time. He was appreciated by his contemporaries and also by artists of the next generation. Rembrandt’s inventory of 1656 included a winter landscape by Jacob Grimmer.

Reine de Bertier de Sauvigny compares this pair in a written communication dated 15-10-1979 to a painting by Jacob Grimmer now in the Museum in Enschede.
According to her, this painting with the same measurements possibly belongs to the same series.

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