(circa 1580–1622 Antwerp)
An allegory of summer,
oil on canvas, 51 x 75 cm, framed

We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for his identification of this painting as a characteristic work by Caullery and for compiling the following catalogue note:

Louis de Caullery was probably born around 1580 in Caullery, a small town near Cambrai. No known documents testify that he actually came from this region in Northern France, but after his death, his wife and children inherited some properties in Cambrai. According to the Liggeren of the St Luke Guild, he became a pupil of Joos de Momper during the season of 1593-94, under the name of Loys Solleri. He had several children with Maria Adriaenssens. In 1621, his death duties were paid to the guild, where he had been listed as a master since 1602. The architectural pieces of Paul Vredeman de Vries had a great influence on his paintings, as did Sebastiaen Vrancx and Frans Francken for the way he dealt with his staffage. It has been assumed that Louis de Caullery travelled to Italy, but there is no evidence for this. The Venetian, Florentine and Romanesque buildings in his works are probably based on those depicted by masters who did visit the Peninsula. De Caullery was inclined towards genre painting and dealt with a wide variety of scenes: carnivals on ice, fireworks, bull-fights, open-air collections, allegories of the five senses and also meetings painted in the spirit of the Fontainebleau School. His colours are highly sophisticated: half tones, ochre-yellow, Veronese green and Burgundy red. In his depictions of buildings, he appears to be concerned with fine precision, while being very skilful at presenting perspective. He died in Antwerp in 1621 or 1622.

Only two extant paintings by the master are fully signed. One is a depiction of a Carnaval in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg and the other is a Gallant Festival belonging to the Louvre, but on display in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Cambrai. The latter of these is also dated 1620. A further, L C monogrammed, work showing an Allegory of the senses in the Nelahozeves Castle in Bohemia, is dated 1618. With only two dated paintings that are only two years apart, it is not possible to sketch De Caullery’s stylistic development. A date during the 1610’s seems most likely for the present work given the general development of Flemish landscape painting. The present painting is very closely related to one of a typical pair by De Caullery offered at Piasa, Paris, 27 March 2000, lot 39 (the set sold for FF 1.718.230). The spatial construction, along with the way that the figures, the architecture and the foliage are rendered, leave no doubt that these works are by the same master. If the Allegory of Summer is compared with the rare signed ones by De Caullery, especially as regards the rendition of the figures, then the comparison shows very clearly that they are done by the same hand.

The present picture must have been part of a series, but no other work can, at this point, be connected to it. Most renderings of landscapes depicting the seasons by De Caullery are allegories which include triumph carts with, in the case of Summer, Ceres the goddess of agriculture (see: I. Wolf and M. Wolters, ‘Lente, Zomer, Winter, drie triomfen van jaargetijden toegeschreven aan Louis de Caullery’, Oud Holland, 125, 2012, p. 5-27). The current picture has a pure rural character with peasants at work or relaxing after hard labour. As such, the painting stands firmly in the tradition of Pieter Brueghel, father and son Grimmer, Marten and Lukas van Valckenborch and others.