This set of panels were described in the inventory of Charles I as ‘copies after Brueghel’ and there remains no reason to doubt this description. One of the elements, Fire, is missing: three panels remain depicting the separate elements of Earth, Air and Water and a forth (this one) depicting all four elements together. The evidence of the inventories of Charles I is ambiguous, but ‘Fire’ may be one of the panels listed.

The composition here is a loose variant of Brueghel’s painting dated 1604 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The size and style of this panel seems sufficiently close to the other surviving three to suggest that it was part of an original set of five, showing elements together and separately. Its similarity however may be coincidental and it may have joined the group almost by accident.