Core Record

Inscriptions: 1) pencil, paper tape, frame: 'DRAWING ROOM'; 2) pencil, frame, a series of numbers: '1B / 27 / 24 / 25'; 3) pencil, frame: 'NO 10'.

Inventory and Sales Catalogue Entries:
Inventory and Valuation of Nos 10 and 20 Lansdown Cresecent Bath, The Tower, on Landsdown and Farm and Premises all adjoining the property of the late William Thomas Beckford Esqr., Sept 13th 1844, Edmund English & Sons, Bath, and Robert Hume, London, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Beckford c. 58, p. 16. Recorded in the Duchess's Drawing Room, 20 Lansdown Crescent, as 'Its Companion' by Breemburg' (i.e. companion to 'Italian Ruins with Figures and Cattle' by 'Poelemburg' also in Brodick collection).
List of Pictures, Furniture, Ornaments, China & c. sent from Bath to Easton Park, 1848-1849, NRAS 332/M/12/50, p. 1. Recorded as 'A Small Landscape with Ruins and Figures / Breemburg.'
Easton Park, Suffolk. A True and Perfect Inventory and Appraisement of All and singular the Household Furniture, Plate, Linen, China, Books, Prints, Pictures, Jewels, Trinkets, Wine and other the Personal Effects of The Most Noble His Grace The Duke of Hamilton K.G. (at the Mansion at Easton Park in the County of Suffolk in the Diocese of Norwich) who died on the 18th day of August 1852. Taken and made on the 13th and following days of September then next ensuring By Robert Cana and William Cana, Appraisers, NRAS 332/M/12/52, vol. 2, p. 17. Recorded in the Drawing Room as '(on copper) Landscape & a castle / Breemburg.'
Valuation for Probate of the Contents of Brodick Castle.. the property of the Arran and Easton Trustees (in the sense of the Hamilton Estates Act, 1918) and of her late Grace Mary Louise, Duchess of Montrose [...], 1957, Christie, Manson and Woods Ltd., Brodick Castle, p. 23. Recorded with its pair in the Drawing Room as 'C. Breenberg / Landscapes with Classical Ruins and Figures / a pair.'
List of Pictures Photographed at Brodick Castle, Isle of Arran, Property of the late Duchess of Montrose, Private Collection Survey, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1958. Ref. B/4935. Recorded as 'Breenberg (attributed) / Landscape with figures.'

Kitson (1969) wrote of this work:

[Breenbergh's] paintings are often very similar to those of his older contemporary, Poelenburgh (in Rome and Florence from 1617 to 1625/7), and can be easily confused with them; nevertheless, there is no doubt that this spirited little landscape with its spiky figures is by Breenbergh and from his Roman period. Both artists inherited the Elsheimerian tradition of the small idyllic landscape but gave it a more pastoral and naturalistic interpretation. Also influenced by Brill, they popularized a type of picture showing the Campagna bathed in a soft light and enlivened with herds and ruins.

Röethlisberger (1981) subsequently refuted Kitson, writing of this work and its companion:

A pair. The first was engraved before 1666 as Poelenburgh, the second in 1777 as Breenbergh. Both have since gone as Breenbergh. It would seem that they are in fact by Poelenburgh, painted towards the end of his Italian period or in the early Utrecht years. They have a somewhat more picturesque touch than his earlier works, but they are smaller than most of them.

Related Works:
Engraved in reverse by Carl Willhelm Weisbrod (1743-1806) in 1777, as by Breenbergh. Its companion, also in the Brodick collection, was engraved in reverse by Jean Morin in 1666 as Poelenburgh.

Kitson (1968) compares this painting to a landscape by Claude Lorraine, dated 1630, which appeared on the New York art market in the 1960s (see Röethlisberger, ‘New Additions to Claude', The Burlington Magazine, vol. 110 (March 1968), pp. 115-119, fig. 2).