Jan Pieter Brueghel

A scion of the famous Brueghel family of painters, he trained in Antwerp with his father and later worked in Liège, Paris and Italy.

[3] His father was the son of Jan Brueghel the Elder, who was one of the most important creative forces in early 17th century Antwerp, a prolific painter in many genres and a frequent collaborator of Rubens.

Garland paintings are a special type of still life developed in Antwerp by artists such as Jan Pieter's grandfather Jan Brueghel the Elder, Hendrick van Balen, Frans Francken the Younger, Peter Paul Rubens and Daniel Seghers.

This genre was inspired by the cult of veneration and devotion to Mary prevalent at the Habsburg court (then the rulers over the southern Netherlands) and in Antwerp generally.

In the later development of the genre, the cartouche in the centre of garland paintings was often a secular scene such as a portrait or an allegorical subject.

[1] The Antwerp painter Erasmus Quellinus II was one of his more frequent collaborators on his garland paintings.

An example is their collaborative Virgin and Child with St Joseph in a garland of flowers (Christie's online auction of 1-20 October 2020 lot 54).

In many works, his collaborators on these works cannot be identified with certainty and are described variously as 'follower of Jan Boeckhorst' as in the Cartouche with a personification of America, surrounded by flowers (Christie's London auction of 26 April 2006 lot 206) or 'circle of Cornelis Schut as in the Mystic marriage of Saint Catherine, surrounded by an oval garland of flowers (Christie's London auction of 3 December 1997 lot 197).