Abel Grimmer

1570 – Antwerp – 1618/19

A Village Landscape with two elegant Riders with a Hawk in the Foreground

Signed and dated 1608
Oil on panel, circular, diameter: 7½ ins. (19.2 cm)
Framed: 12¼ x 12¼ ins. (31.3 x 31.3 cm)
CS0383 

Provenance

Private collection, Germany, until 2003
With Johnny Van Haeften Limited, London, 2003
Private collection, Guernsey, 2003-2021


Essay

This charming circular panel by Abel Grimmer depicts a Flemish village scene with an elegant couple out hawking in the foreground. His painting technique has a certain naivety and charm about it with simple uncomplicated buildings, the leaves on the trees dotted on without the definition of artists like Brueghel, but his paintings display an idiosyncratic and immediately recognisable consistency. This one is dated 1608, at the height of his powers.