Provenance
Mary Charlotte Hunter; Christies. London 29th April 1949, lot 27; Dr E I Schapiro, London 1953; Christie’s, London 30th March, 1979, Lot 15; Robert Noortman Galleries, London, 1979; Private Collection.
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Description / Expertise
This magnificent painting by Frans Francken the Younger, shows the Meeting of Joseph and Jacob. The episode shown in the picture, which is recorded in Genesis, shows the moment where Jacob (or Israel) is reunited with his long-lost son, whom he had given up for dead, in the land of Goshen. “And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and presented himself unto him; and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive”. (Genesis, Chapter 46 lines 29-30). In the middle of the foreground are the figures of Jacob, on the left, and Joseph, on the right, wearing his “coat of many colours”. In the background can bee seen a large procession of Israelites, the 66 children and grandchildren of Jacob, who had accompanied him into Egypt in order to try to find food after the famine in Israel.
This painting, which is dated by Harting c.1624-6, is a very fine collaborative work between Franken the Elder, who executed the main figures and Abraham Govaerts and Hans Jordaens 111, who were responsible respectively for the landscape and the small figures of the Israelites in the background on the left-hand side. This type of collaborative work, which involved bringing together a team of specialists, was brought to pitch of perfection in Antwerp in the early seventeenth century. Abraham Govaerts, who was responsible for the landscape background, was a near neighbor of Frans Francken’s in St Jansstrate, who became a master of the St Luke’s Guild in Antwerp in 1607 and the Dean of the Guild in 1622. In all probability he trained in the studio of Jan Brueghel the Elder, whose refined style he adopted. Hans Jordaens was a figure specialist, and fellow member of the Guild of St Luke.
The painting is remarkable for the powerful characterization of the main figures and the skill with which Francken conveys a variety of reactions to the encounter witnessed on the faces and in the gestures of the participants and onlookers. These range from the very moving expressions of love seen in the two central figures of Jacob and Joseph, to the surprise, remorse and penitence of Joseph’s brothers, who had sold him into slavery in Egypt and are now forced to beg for forgiveness and mercy. Also typical of Franken’s skill, is the masterly painting of such details as the brocaded flowers on Joseph’s coat. These invest the encounter with a spirit of courtliness, which is reinforced by the procession of Israelites painted by Hans Jordaens, with their elaborate costumes, exotic animals and headed by a stately chariot, which winds its way down the hill towards the central group.
The most important member of a family of artists, Frans Francken the Younger specialized in small cabinet pictures. Essentially a figurative artist, he often collaborated with specialist landscape and architectural artists such as Josse de Momper the Younger and Pieter Neeffs. He was presumably a student of his father, but probably also trained in Paris with his uncle Hieronymous I. In 1605 Frans became a master of in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. He soon showed the innovative approach to subject matter that was to characterize his oeuvre, inventing the theme of the ‘monkey’s kitchen’ and developing the genre of Kunstkammern and picture galleries. In the 1620s his early palette of green, olives and red-brown tones was replaced by a brighter, cooler spectrum, and the following decade his use of thick impasto gave way to a preference for more liquid, translucent glazes. From c. 1621 – the year of his father’s death – he sometimes, as in the Colnaghi painting, signed his works D o Franck, that is Francken the Elder.
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