Born in Antwerp in 1564, de Momper trained with his father, Bartholomeus de Momper, and became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in 1581. During the 1580s he travelled to Italy, most likely first going to Venice where he probably studied with Lodewijk Toeput (called Il Pozzoserrato) before continuing to Rome, where he has been identified as working in the church of San Vitale. This transalpine journey had a lasting effect upon the young artist, and the mountainous vistas he encountered would define his artistic production for decades. [1]

Upon his return to Antwerp before 1590, where he married Elisabeth Gobijn on 4 September 1590, De Momper immediately achieved financial success and attracted powerful patrons such as Archduke Ernest, Governor of the Netherlands. The success of his early career is illustrated by his ability to purchase the house 'De Vliegende Os' on the Vaarplaats in 1596, and by the praise lavished on his skill for "painting landscapes excellently with a clever technique" in Karel van Mander's Schilderboeck of 1604. [2] He served as dean of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1611-12.

In 1616, Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, governess of the Southern Netherlands, granted him tax exemptions at his request, as in his later years he was unable to paint as diligently as before and was spending considerable sums at local taverns. De Momper's fame as a landscape painter was such that in the extremely popular Iconography, a series of portrait prints of artists based on Anthony van Dyck's designs (circa 1632-44), he is described as Judocus de Momper Pictor montium Antwerpiae (Antwerp Painter of Mountains). Not until the 1620s did he expand his oeuvre, adding Walloon landscapes and village scenes to his production. Some of his panels have an overtly Swiss flavor, such as his depiction of the great Swiss national hero William Tell in his Alpine Landscape with William Tell Shooting at the Apple in the collection of Raimond Gregoire in Les Loges-en-Josas. Despite his early financial success, De Momper's later years were difficult. He died in Antwerp on 5 February 1635. Nevertheless, his numerous mountainous landscapes and their enduring popularity secured his reputation as one of the foremost landscape painters of the Flemish school. 

In addition to paintings, often painted in collaboration with leading staffage painters such as Jan I Brueghel, de Momper also produced landscape drawings, which are very similar in subject matter and style to his paintings. The precise dating on the present sheet indicates that this drawing very probably depicts a real location, rather than one of the imaginary views that more usually provided Momper with his subjects, but unfortunately we do not have any record of where the artist travelled at this relatively late stage in his career. His only known trip to Italy, which gave rise to most of his other known topographical drawings, took place in the 1580s.

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[1] For more on the life and work of Joos de Momper, see Klaus Ertz, Joos de Momper der Jüngere (1564 - 1635) – Die Gemälde mit kritischem oeuvrekatalog, Freren, 1986.

[2] Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-boeck, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 295v.