 Fygofeg, y Cadwod, a'ch gwaith. Dw i ddweudio i'n gweithio yng Nghymru yma, o'r ystryd, i fyf i, gwneud y unrhyw ffordd o'r golygu. Ychydig yn gweithio, nawr, felly yn eu chyfnod a rwy'r cyfrwyng yn gweithio i'r hebag neu bod ychynwryd am fod widerio i'ch gweithio i'r hynny sy'n cydw i mi cwestiwni gydraig neu bod yn ymgyrchai i mi cwym ni i gweithio i'r gwasanaeth ac hynny'n gweithio i ffôr. The subject of this evening's lecture is based around an exhibition that we opened last week at the Holborn Museum in Bath. It is an exhibition of which we are incredibly proud because it is an opportunity for us to place the Holborn Museum in the public's mind once again as a collection of importance and of significance. A ffew years ago, in 2011, the Holborn Museum reopened with a new extension to the rear, and it has welcomed numerous visitors in this new look of the museum. And now the challenge for the museum is for people to be able to engage once again with the collection that was first founded by Sir William Holborn in the early to mid 19th century. And this evening when John Lewis was speaking to us as the newly admitted fellows about the objectives of the Society of Antiquaries, I thought how very appropriate it was to be able to speak this evening on this topic because I was quite moved to hear how the society is really all about opening up scholarship, art, new research to broad audiences and not holding research to ourselves, but instead making it as accessible as possible. And that, of course, is what exhibitions are about. This exhibition is called Bruegel Defining a Dynasty, and it is accompanied by a book, which is actually written by my co-curator, Dr Amy Orek. And Amy has been working with me on this show for two and a half years and deserves all the recognition for the new research which I'm talking about this evening because we worked on this so closely together. And I highly recommend the book. It's very reasonably priced at $16.95. So for those of you who have not been to Bath recently, this is the beautiful facade of the Holborn Museum, which is looking particularly fine at the moment as we are gracing it with these banners celebrating the Bruegel exhibition. And the exhibition is on the top floor of the museum, and it aims to unravel the complexities of the Bruegel family. Now in doing this, we had to pull together a new family tree. It was a challenge indeed, a way of actually looking at a who's who of a dynasty that spans 150 years. And in fact five generations, we keep speaking, you'll read in the press, we keep saying four generations, but in fact it's five generations that we include in this exhibition. And so we start the exhibition and the book with a family tree, which of course highlights Bruegel the Elder as the father of the dynasty. But in fact we go a step above Bruegel the Elder because it all really begins with Peter Coke van Elst and Macon Verhulst. When Bruegel the Elder died, his sons Peter Bruegel the Younger and Jan Bruegel the Elder were only four and one respectively. And so often we hear it said, oh they were taught by their father, they just carried on the tradition that they learned from Bruegel the Elder. But in fact it's always worthwhile stopping and questioning how, how did they learn from their father when they were only tots when he passed away? Well it seems that it was Macon Verhulst who taught them how to paint using the drawings that they had inherited. And so that was the starting point of this exhibition, the idea of looking at how Bruegel the Elder style was disseminated through the family tree. And it's an opportunity for us at the Holborn Museum to use works from within the collection itself. We already knew that we had two works by Bruegel the Younger in the collection, this robbing the bird's nest and this, the visit to a farmhouse which had both been collected by William Holborn in the early 19th century. We also had this, a little roundel that was tentatively attributed to David Tenney as the Younger, which we had conserved for the exhibition on which to add to light revealed the signature which Sir Christopher White has verified to be true. And so we now know that this is a work by David Tenney as the Younger himself. And we also have this, a beautiful little still life on copper of a breakfast scene of cheese and ham on and olives, which was painted by a member of the circle of Jan van Kessel. David Tenney is Jan van Kessel. It's not often that the relationship of Tenney and Van Kessel has been spoken about in the same breath as that of the Bruegel family. And yet when we go back to what is now my screensaver at the moment, which I have a carry in my handbag at all times, the family tree of the Bruegel family, we can see quite clearly the links here of Bruegel the Younger and Jan Bruegel the Elder as the children of Peter Bruegel the Elder. But then when we look down this line we see that David Tenney as the Younger was actually the son-in-law of Jan Bruegel. And then when we look across to Jan van Kessel the Elder he was the grandson of Jan Bruegel, remembering that Jan Bruegel married twice. And so Tenney and Kessel are part of this dynasty. And quite a striking but simple thing to bear in mind is that all the members of this family had access to the original drawings by Peter Bruegel the Elder. So then that is a starting point for a theme that links all of them. And yet they are all innovators in their own right. And so this project afforded us the opportunity to look at these artists together and to challenge some misconceptions, in particular around the artist Peter Bruegel the Younger. And some of you might have read a recent article by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. We have received incredible press coverage for this exhibition but it is always the negative article that sticks in one's mind. And Jonathan Jones, who may I add has not visited the exhibition, has written about Peter Bruegel the Elder being the only Bruegel that is worth thinking about. The only Bruegel that we should ever really look at. And that Peter Bruegel the Younger is merely an imitator and a copyist. And why would the Holborn Museum waste anybody's time by putting his works on their walls? Well, I say challenge accepted. Let's look at Peter Bruegel the Younger and see how he fits in with this and whether he can be seen as a great artist in his own right. And one of the starting points for considering this comes down to the complexity of the spellings of the names within the Bruegel family. Now our poor visitor services assistants at the Holborn Museum are constantly dealing with a barrage of inquiries and complaints about our misspellings on the labels and the fact that we veer wildly between the H and not the H. We are consistent in using the U-E in Bruegel's name. We just pick one and stick with it. It always seems wisest. But what is really interesting is that in 1559 Peter Bruegel the Elder dropped the H in his signature. And so then he adopted, and we have it here for you to see the two different types, he adopted this uppercase way of writing his name but without the H. So first we have the more gothic lettering which includes the H and then from 1559 onwards we have this uppercase Roman uppercase lettering without the H. And we could debate all evening the reasons behind this but Amy and I have put forward the idea which has been said before that it seems most likely that this aligns with the moment when Bruegel is in the company of humanists in Antwerth. And that this way of writing his name makes him seem somewhat more classical. Now there are other ideas that abound but this seems to be the most straightforward explanation for the reason for him dropping the H. But then Peter Bruegel the Younger inserts the H in his signature. There are variants, there are moments when he has the U and the E the other way around and there are moments when he doesn't have the H but in the majority of his signed works he inserts the H as does Jan Bruegel the Elder. And we think it would appear that they do that in order to differentiate from their father. And that is for me the strongest argument for looking at why they are artists in their own right not simply imitators because if you were trying to pass off your work as the work of your father then you would surely imitate his signature too. So I thought I would just give a little glimpse into what the exhibition looks like. This is the starting section of the exhibition but I will not steal its thunder. This is one of the only views you'll see this evening of the interior of the show. But we begin with a section Bruegel Invental. So looking at Bruegel the Elder and his influence. And I think it's worth pausing for a moment on just hearing Ortelius' epitaph of Bruegel. The he wrote in 1574 that Bruegel was the most perfect painter of his age. No one, unless jealous, envious or ignorant of his art could ever deny. A strong epitaph indeed. And it is carried through in the power of the paintings in this section. We were delighted to be lent the adoration of the Kings from the National Gallery in London. The first time that painting has been lent outside of London since 1902. And what that allowed us to do was to start with, you know there are only four paintings by Bruegel the Elder in this country and this was the only one that we officially requested for the exhibition. And it allows us to be able to start with a painted work by Bruegel the Elder but to compare it with the adoration of the Kings from the Royal Collection painted by Peter Koch van Elst. So Peter Koch van Elst if we think back to the family tree was Bruegel's father-in-law. Bruegel trained with Peter Koch van Elst and it was also while he was being trained by Peter Koch van Elst that he met his future wife. And visually it is so striking to look at these two works side by side. Different scale, forgive me on slides, it's always very difficult to see. The Bruegel adoration is much larger than the Koch van Elst. But simply looking at the two we can see here the Antwerp Manorist style. This manored Christ child adopting the crucifixion pose. And then the dilapidated classical buildings in the background. It is very impactful storytelling but it is of a particular type. It is Italianate and it was painted around 1530. So then fast forward 30 years and we have Bruegel the Elders telling of the same scene. And yes he does not give us the classical architecture, Italianate architecture. Instead he gives us a dilapidated stable with a simple wooden beam and almost hidden in the background a donkey of the ass. And then here this soldier looking down in consternation at the scene before him. And then when we really look at the kings in this scene we see the faces not as we would expect to see the mage I depicted. But instead as we would expect to see Bruegel's peasants depicted. The rough tone of their faces. The lines and the way that they wear those clothes as if they are wearing fancy dress at a village festival. This Flemish retelling of the scene is a really powerful way of immediately seeing the innovation that Bruegel the Elder brought to his storytelling. To his way of depicting a religious moment. And in the same section of the exhibition we are also delighted to borrow a drawing and a related print. And the drawing is by Bruegel the Elder Elk. It dates to 1558 and it shows Elk every man blindly trying to look into a lamp. But despite even the glasses that perch on his nose he is unable to see. And then here in the background there is an image of a man who looks in a mirror who looks but does not see or know himself. It was very important for us to be able to have a Bruegel drawing to start the exhibition as well. And to be able to compare it with its intended resulting form the engraving the print. And this was published by Hieronymus Van Cock and the engraver was Peter van der Hayden. And when we look at the engraving we immediately see well it is augmented with more words. The translation of the Latin is No one does not seek his advantage everywhere. I love the double negatives. No one does not seek his advantage everywhere. No one does not seek himself in all that he does. No one does not look everywhere for private gain. This one pulls, that one pulls. All have the same love of possession. So this print was widely disseminated and it serves to remind us of the popularity of Bruegel's works and of his imagery which would have captured public imagination. His paintings themselves were collected by the elite. We know that the ruling Spanish were buying his works. We know that they came to be in the possession later of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. And yet their subject matter is always challenging and it reflects back on human nature constantly. In fact his works act as a mirror for ourselves in a way of looking and for me it is a reflection also on his time and on the discourse which not only he was involved in but also which he was trying to engender in his viewers. So these are paintings that are intended to be discussed. Now the great joy of putting on an exhibition is to test these theories and to see how visitors react. The second section of the exhibition looks at the proverbs and we have borrowed this the Netherlandish proverbs which is a version after Bruegel the Elder not by Peter Bruegel the Younger. So we know Christina Curry who wrote the Bruegel phenomenon with Dominique Hallart in 2011 created a seminal work which once and for all identifies the hand of Bruegel the Younger as opposed to the hand of other imitators or copyers of Bruegel the Elder. And so she carried out infrared investigations of this painting and was able to see that the under drawing did not conform with the type of under drawing which Bruegel the Younger carried out. So this is a work from Norfield College in Oxford and it shows the Netherlandish proverbs and it is a loose retelling of Bruegel the Elder's famous version which is in Berlin. And this dates to around 1600 to 1630 and you know the Netherlandish proverbs often has an alternative title of the world upside down. And the great joy of seeing this painting included in the exhibition is the noise that it has added to the exhibition space because visitors stop and talk. They want to identify each of the vignettes that are happening, all of them happening in isolation. This is not a storytelling moment with figures interacting naturally with one another. Each individual grouping acts out their own proverb and there are around 90 proverbs in this painting which Amy Oruk for the first time has identified in the book for this exhibition. So there have been identifiers for Bruegel the Elder's original painting but for the first time the proverbs specific to this painting have all been identified. And she also gives modern day versions of what that might mean for us as well. And examples would be here, the man hitting his head against a brick wall. The man here who falls between two stools or here in the foreground we see that a swine has fallen into a pool but the man here is actually filling in the pool. So he's filling in the pool after the swine has drowned a little bit like bolting the door after the horse has already left. And here one of my favourites actually is a man who's crying over spilt porridge so the equivalent of crying over spilt milk. This is such a lively painting, you can spend hours looking at it and unpicking and laughing seeing the familiar figure who turns up again and again in Bruegelian scenes which only through this exhibition for the first time did I realise the significance of the painting. He has a bandage around his head, this symbolises a man with a toothache in his ear. So which means a hypochondriac, he has a toothache in his ear, there's nothing wrong with him at all but he wears a bandage. It is a painting that is intended to make us laugh, children are really enjoying the bottoms hanging out of the window here using it as a public toilet. People enjoy laughing at this painting and yet originally it was intended to show great erudition. Collector's would not only want to own a painting like this but also to collect individual proverbs which they would gather together in books. They would be the subject of discussion over dinner parties. You would hang a painting like this in the more public areas of your house so in the dining room in particular. We know in Antwerp in particular that Bruegel, the eldest paintings were often hung in dining rooms so that they allow discourse around the different elements. What a joy when that discourse can not only be illuminating but also can be quite humorous. Within this same section we have this wonderful loan from the Society of Antiquaries. This painting of spring normally hangs at Calmscott Manor and we were absolutely delighted that it could be included in the exhibition. With this painting we see a version by Peter Bruegel the Younger which derives directly from an engraving. The engraving is a Bruegel the Elder composition which shows spring. There is an engraving by Bruegel the Elder of spring and of summer but there were no engravings by him of the other two seasons. Van der Hayden created the other two to complete the series but the two originals of spring and summer are quite illuminating. In this print we see labourers working and their planting vegetables but then in the background we see quite an aristocratic scene where figures are dining in very fine garments and enjoying the pleasures of the springtime air. The Bruegel the Younger version which was painted in 1632 makes some crucial changes from the original print. We see planted tulips as opposed to vegetables which if we think about the date 1632 that's very appropriate. The moment when tulips were really gaining currency and so it's a spectacular array of this very valuable flower. The injection of colour changes the way that I personally engage with this. It seems a much fresher and lighter engagement with the scene when we see colour but then in the background we see that the scene is changed and the aristocratic scene has been replaced by a village with thatched roofs and peasants who dance. And so the aristocracy have been turned instead into the everyday which is in keeping with the taste of the time. Bruegel the Younger knew his audience and if you want to read more about this painting and it's particularly interesting provenance that Dante Gabriel Rossetti owning this painting I think seems entirely apt. It seems so in line with pre rough light ideas of good husbandry and understanding of the seasons. Julia Dudkowitz wrote an article in the British Art Journal in autumn 2015 which goes into the provenance of this painting and into the five old master works which Rossetti owned and that were in Kelmscott and were left behind there when he died in 1874. So the proverbs give us a sort of tool, a way of understanding particularly Peter Borygo the Younger's market. A type of audience who want to discuss paintings and pick out individual details and be amused by them. It's a pastime of enjoyment to look at these works. And we had a work in store at the Holborn Museum which had been tentatively attributed to an imitator of Bruegel. So you remember at the beginning I showed our other two works by Bruegel the Younger and this has the same provenance was acquired by William Holborn in the early to mid 19th century. But it was covered with a discolored varnish and we were all very familiar with this type of story. There are paintings which you cannot afford to get conserved and so they can sometimes languish in store for longer than they ought. And this painting did seem even through the discolored varnish and in fact what we found to be layers of nicotine actually revealed did seem to be something of promise and so we took a punt. We decided to find a donor, a sponsor who would sponsor the conservation work and to send it to a conservation studio in Bristol to see what a removal of the discolored varnish might reveal and it revealed this. Spectaculately beautiful, such a vibrant colours, such a rich telling of the wedding dance and the open air which was one of Bruegel the Younger's most popular scenes. In fact there are 100 versions of this painting so you might wonder why I make such a fuss of this one being from the Holborn Museum but there are only 31 versions that are autographed Peter, Bruegel the Younger. In fact there are 32 now because Christina Currie and Dominique Hallart have verified that this is a Bruegel the Younger and it is a great excitement to be able to reveal this painting in the exhibition. When Amy and I were researching this exhibition we came across a poem which perhaps some of you know but it's quite joyful to read it while looking at the painting so if you'll indulge me it's a poem by William Carlos Williams titled The Dance and he wrote it in 1944. In Bruegel's great picture, The Kermis, the dancers go round, they go round and around the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles, tipping their bellies they prance as they dance in Bruegel's great picture, The Kermis. For me the fact that that poem exists is testament to the power of this painting. Bruegel's Kermis scenes which in the very way they are put together swirl in a dance movement so that our eye whizzes around the picture plane as we look at it and with the wonderful Bruegelian flashes of orange which articulate the surface, the composition. And then after we've been wowed by that brilliance and exuberance of the scene we're pulled into the details and we see there are some men urinating against a hut in the background. We see that this man here as he dances around his coat tails whirl out and whizz out to the side of him and then our eye is drawn up to the bride who sits with a slightly flushed complexion counting the money that has been given to her, the gifts on her wedding day and next to her look at her mother who is leaning over to make sure that not one coin is missed. In engravings of this there is an inscription that said that the bride was flushed and full which perhaps implies that she was full with child which might explain why she is not dancing and then my favourite part of the composition, these figures here, the bagpipers and this is one of those typical Bruegel moments because the figures were plotted in first and then the tree curves around them but the bagpipers in all of the versions of this painting look surly, they are tired they can't believe they're having to play another jig and everybody else has been drinking and eating and not them and that comes across so beautifully which ends on such a human level, helps us to enjoy this painting and when we had seen the painting it's such a wonderful experience as many of you know when you go into the conservation studio and see a work being revealed the moment when we saw that actually the light in the sky was not a night time scene but instead a dusk sky so just starting to turn into a night time scene but so much lighter than we had thought there was a bird revealed here that we couldn't see before and then in the background a lyrical landscape so lightly painted Bruegel the Younger had a really thin application of paint which means that his underdrawing shows through in fact he used his drawing to build up the scene like no other artist that I know he uses his underdrawing to give depth and to give the quality particularly of garments and of fabrics and so this led us to have the confidence to carry out infrared analysis of the painting and in doing this we were able to see very clearly how very fully worked up the central section is but then typical to Bruegel the Younger the background scene where we know the trees are there there is no detailed underdrawing and I think this is because when he is painting figures when he is painting trees and the buildings he uses the line but when he paints trees he just uses the paint which gives a thinness of effect which actually gives that sense of the leaves blowing in the breeze but the particular detail of the infrared that was most revealing was when we look at the type of drawing and Bruegel the Younger has a hook that he does to denote a drapery fold and they are all over this painting and so that was when we knew for sure that we were looking at work by Bruegel the Younger himself an autograph work so that makes it the 32nd known painting of this scene by him and the only one in a UK public collection an exciting time indeed for the Holbyn Museum and so this painting graces the section at the centre of the exhibition that looks at feasts and festivals and we are able to compare it with a work by Jan Bruegel the Elder which dates to 1600 which has also been meant to us by the Royal Collection and in this scene what we actually witness is very similar to the wedding dance in the open air it is in essence the same it is peasants reveling they have come out of this church they revel in the centre of the scene and here there is a figure of possibly Mary and Joseph on horseback so the village characters who have dressed up as part of a religious festival so in essence it is very similar but in practice the two paintings seem worlds apart and people always talk about Jan Bruegel Velvet Bruegel being the more successful of the two brothers so he is the younger brother and yet people say well he was the artist who collaborated with Rubens he was the artist who gained favour of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella he was the artist who was thought of as a court artist to the Holy Roman Emperor so he is the successful brother whereas in fact I think what I see is a slightly more refined way of painting he paints on copper his paintings sing out so beautifully he uses the medium so well so that the paint really radiates but I think that refinement of his technique and the brightness of his paintings makes us think somehow that they are better whereas in fact what we can see is that he knows his market he is painting for the elite and so he creates works that function in a jewel like way so that you can show your wealth by owning an oil on copper by Jan Bruegel does that make him a better artist than Peter Bruegel the Younger who is painting more for the emerging merchant class who want to emulate the collecting of the elite but who are buying with slightly smaller purse strings and are trying to adorn their newly acquired townhouses in Antwerp with works that would be talking points does it make Bruegel the Younger Peter Bruegel the Younger a lesser artist than Jan Bruegel is it just allow us to understand the art market of the time well in the same central section we have borrowed this work the procession to Calvary from the National Trust and you'll remember this was saved for the nation just over five years ago and it is a huge painting in two ways it is of a massive scale but also it is a huge painting because it is so powerful the way that Bruegel the Younger tells the procession to Calvary derives loosely from a prototype by his father but is entirely inventive and there is always a moment when the loans start arriving for an exhibition and you sort of get an ecstasy and every painting that arrives is my favourite painting and each one gets more and more exciting but the moment when we revealed this painting from its case and we were carrying out the condition check and then I stepped back and looked at it I suddenly saw it in a completely different way and two things hit me about it firstly I realised that this is in the same genre as the Jan Bruegel and the Peter Bruegel the Younger wedding dance that we just looked at so the village fair by Jan Bruegel and the wedding dance because it struck me that actually I've always thought of this while it's a procession to Calvary so it's a different type of painting but in fact I suddenly realised that this is an evocation of a festival moment of a cermis and actually the figures that we see even the figure of Christ are potentially an actor but Bruegel the Younger takes his artistic licence and so he embellishes what might have been an enactment an actual walking through a theatrical enactment of the procession to Calvary and he embellishes it with figures with soldiers on horseback with all kinds of people watching so that we have two little figures there tiny little children who seem to be sitting to have a picnic and then we have a figure here reclining who looks almost Italianate he seems so out of place a sort of early Renaissance figure reclining to watch the scene and then here two rather finely dressed figures who stand on a rocky outcrop and we are standing with them we have this slightly elevated position Bruegel the Younger implicates us in this scene too so we are part of the crowd but we're part of the festival and I know that sounds ludicrous that it hadn't struck me before and yet also what struck me the second thing that I'd never noticed before was that we are so adept at talking about Bruegel the Younger's way of telling a story through figures and through little vignettes moments like Veronica White and Christ's face here which we can pull out and help to tell the story but I had forgotten to look at the sky and the way that Bruegel the Younger actually tells the procession to Calvary through the tones he uses and the blues that he uses in the sky itself and so we go from a seringly bright blue on the left of the panel across to dark heavy melancholy tones over Calvary itself and that is so simple to do really but so effective and so he shifts your mood as you look at the painting you feel the brightness of the sky almost into a state of morning of grief now that is what I want to talk to Jonathan Jones about if he would take up my invitation to come and see the exhibition because that for me is invention that is an artist who is not simply copying repeating what has gone before but is doing something new the final section of the exhibition celebrates Jan Bruegel we call it Velvet Bruegel we've used that archaic nickname for Jan Bruegel because I love it we have a nickname that actually sums up the quality the texture of your paint and here we have this wonderful stoneware vase from the Fitzwilliam Museum but what we've been able to do for the first time is to look at this extravagant painting and to compare it with another still life this by Jan Bruegel the younger so Jan Bruegel the eldest oldest son Jan Bruegel the younger it's a joy with all the names and the titles so we're able to look directly from father to son and then in something that was really quite exciting when the loan was approved we are able to look at Abraham Bruegel a Bruegel who is surely forgotten by all of us I had to look him up to find out exactly where he came in in the mix and so we look at dates that range with the Fitzwilliam Jan Bruegel the elder 1607 to 8 to the Jan Bruegel the younger which was painted in 1617 to 25 and then 1671 the date of this still life and visually we can see a progression through and a confidence in still life painting which reminds us that this was a new type of painting in fact the Fitzwilliam work is celebrated as one of the first still lives of this type and so Jan Bruegel like his father was an innovator and he wrote to his great patron and friend Cardinal Federico Borromeo who he had met on his travels in Italy and then they kept up a correspondence for the rest of Jan Bruegel's life and he wrote, Jan Bruegel wrote Cardinal Borromeo and said under the flowers I have painted a jewel and rare objects it is up to you to judge whether or not flowers surpass gold and jewels so he is creating a discourse around a simple flower piece and of course we know what's happening here we know now because we're so used to Dutch still lives and flower pieces we know that the great skill is in depicting different flowers that bloom at different times of the year and putting them in an impossibly small vase so that they might topple over to show the great wealth and variety and the fact that the artist has had access to see each of these flowers at the different times that they bloom but then he sets up the comparison with the jewels at the foot particularly with diamonds and gemstones and so then he is saying this discourse between the two which is more powerful, which is better the flowers themselves are the jewels which do you value more and I suppose the correct answer is the best thing to have is a painting that includes both of them and then you can really have it all but doesn't that remind you it's the same way of interacting with a painting doesn't it remind you of the way that we talk about the nebulandish proverbs and the way that we talk about the adoration of the kings these paintings are discussion points that is why the exhibition at the Holmen at the moment is so loud people are talking they're discussing these things and you hear them saying look look there's a ring at the bottom I haven't seen that and then they talk about it and they engage still today in what was an early 17th century way of looking at beauty and comparing across and so also in this section we include Jan van Kessel and I'm rather proud of this we got a designer to evoke an antwerp cabinet in a lamlet that we put on the wall and then we hung some exquisite coppers oil on coppers in shadow boxes and the centre piece is this these four coppers from the Ashmolean Museum and in these we see Jan van Kessel really making the most of scientific investigation of the encyclopedic eye, of the taste at the time of looking in great detail at nature and this is exactly the same period these were painted around 1650 exactly the same period that the microscope was invented in the Netherlands no accident and these little coppers by Jan van Kessel the Elder are so much within the Breguelian tradition a member Jan van Kessel the Elder is the grandson of Jan Breguel the Elder and so he is part of this dynasty and yet he is inventing too he is also an artist unique but part of the dynasty and the great joy of these copper works is firstly but you can't believe the variety of the insects and the way that they capture the eye they really draw you in but the reason that we've set them as we have is to remind the viewer that these little coppers would have been the outside of drawers in a collector's cabinet and then you would open the drawer and inside you might have a specimen of a butterfly and so we have the same discourse the comparison of art against nature and which is finer and then what is the artist doing in capturing nature with such an attention to detail the skill of it leaves you breathless in fact Jacob Campo Oveerman in 1729 for me summed up the miraculous nature of seeing the work by Jan van Kessel he wrote we saw a picture by van Kessel painted so skillfully that more than one connoisseur would have mistaken it for Breguel's paintbrush I'm so glad that that quote exists and that we see that even though at first glance to compare this with the Anne Borogel stoneware vase or with a kermis in the open air by Peter Borogel the younger to say that they all come from the same tree that they come from the same type of painting might seem strange but in fact we can see so many similarities within this painting family and we can also see a sort of confidence that comes from being part of something the confidence of adopting your father's name but inserting the age to make sure that you are differentiated and yet part of it the confidence that comes from having access to original drawings by Borogel the Elder and of knowing that your patrons are going to understand that you come from within this this elite family of painters within Antwerp the confidence within a small city of being part of a family that is understood by other artists to be so significant that they want to collaborate with other movements painting numerous works with the Anne Borogel but also other artists Paulus Brill and Rottenhammer also collaborating with the Anne Borogel so it was something to be part of and through this exhibition we try and draw that out and bring clarity to the complexity of the family tree but also to bring an opportunity to find new perspectives on what are surely the finest visual reflections on life love beauty fun faith and human folly ever to have been created thank you very much