Furthermore, the sale will offer a deeply intimate Winter Landscape by John Constable (estimate $250/350,000).  Painted in 1832, it is a remarkable replica of Jacob van Ruisdael’s painting from the 1660s (today seen in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art).  A great admirer of Ruisdael’s works, Constable painted the Dutch artist’s winter landscape as a form of therapy to soothe his heartache after the loss of two of his dearest friends. Sir Robert Peel, a British politician who founded the Metropolitan Police Service and was later Prime Minister, lent Constable the Ruisdael work for a period of time to paint his version of the work, but was insistent that Constable introduce a difference to the canvas so as to distinguish the two. Constable thus added a small dog in the lower left corner of his painting. Constable was so attached to this painting that he frequently used it in his teachings to illustrate Ruisdael’s painterly talent, and kept it in his personal collection up until his estate sale in 1838.

The auction also features a beautiful collaboration on copper by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen depicting The Triumph of Love (estimate $300/500,000). Such partnerships were common during the 17th-century and allowed artists to contribute their own specialty to a variety of projects and commissions. In the present example, van Balen was responsible for the myriad of figures and Brueghel the natural and still life elements. Datable to circa 1608, nearly a decade after the two first joined forces around 1600, this work is considered among the pair's most accomplished joint efforts as it exemplifies a seamless blending of their individual artistic minds into one expertly executed whole.