Jacob Grimmer

Antwerp 1525/6 – Antwerp before 1590

A Landscape with Travellers near a Castle – An Allegory
of Spring

Signed GRIMMER FECIT | Lower left
Oil on panel
H. 27,3 cm. W. 37 cm.

RECORD
The present picture is recorded at the RKD in The Hague under nr. 102433 as by Jacob Grimmer

REFERENCE LITERATURE
Mander, K. van (1603/4). Schilder-boeck. Haarlem, Vol. II, fol. 256V
Bertier de Sauvigny, R. (1991). Jacob et Abel Grimmer. Brussels, p. 68, fig. 13; p. 81, fig. 28

CATALOGUE NOTE
Jacob Grimmer’s rural scenes and landscapes marke an important development in 16th century Flemish landscape painting, away from the preceding landscapes with fantastic panoramas of earlier masters. Jacon Grimmer was one of the first landscape painters to break with the old panoramic ‘World landscape’ format set by the followers of Joachim Patinir and to concentrate upon a more realistic portrayal of everyday life. The present atmospheric Spring Landscape arguably originally would have formed part of a set of the Four Seasons, at them explored several times by the Antwerp Master Jacob Grimmer. In fact, the motifs of figures planting out a kitchen garden enclosure and of families travelling along the roads moving their possessions were typically used by Grimmer to denote this time of year and recur, for example, in the larger panel dated 1581 kept in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Algiers (Bertier de Sauvigny, 1991, p. 68, fig. 13). The specific figures of the old woman with the barrow, the family to her right and the group of the Lord of the Manor greeting two other men all recur in another picture on panel kept in a private collection (Bertier de Sauvigny 1991, p. 81, fig. 28).

Jacob Grimmer was the son of Nicolaas Grimmer and Elisabeth Cops. The only documentary about his 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 an architectural painter.

Jacob was principally a painter of landscapes and winter scenes although he also painted some themed works such as the Tower of babel. He often returned to the subject of the Four Seasons or the Twelve Months, of which the present picture may have formed a part. His earliest dated work was dated 1546 and the latest works from 1589. As was common practice in the Antwerp art sector, Jacob Grimmer often collaborated with other specialist 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. Karel van Mander claimed that he knew of no other painter as ‘outstandingly skilled in landscapes’ (Mander, 1603-4, II, fol. 256v). Grimmer 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.