Tag Archives: Peiter Brueghel the Elder

“Why do we want these works to turn out to be by Velázquez and Michelangelo? After all, the art is the same either way.”

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The Wine of St. Martin’s Day, a previously ignored painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
 

“In the end we want another celebrity attribution like this one because we want to get things straight. History tries to make sense out of chaos, toward which the world inevitably inclines. Art historians create hierarchies, categories and movements; they attribute causes and effects to conjure an appearance of logic. Attributing a picture to a household deity like Bruegel or Michelangelo affirms our sense of control, our ability to get a grip on our affairs, at least for the moment. We take comfort in mooring some grimy, forgotten canvas, another example of life’s flotsam and, implicitly, of our own fate, to one of the pillars of art history.” – Via the NYTimes

Maybe that’s the reason; we’re so excited by the discovery of a masterpiece we forget we never thought it was great before. Maybe its the thrill of discovery. But I think we could all just be a tad foolish.

A Bruegel For All Seasons

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder‘s The Harvesters, above, is an iconic fall painting for me. This large work, bursting with golden yellow tones, illuminates the room it hangs in at the Met, more reminiscent of a Van Gogh than of the 16th c. works around it. However, Fall is nearly over.
The painting below is more appropriate for days when it gets dark at 4:30 in the afternoon. Hunters in the Snow is a rare winter landscape of Bruegel, and one the similarly captures how a season feels. It’s flat grey sky and the starkness of the trees against the white snow exude chill. Like The Harvesters, it’s a picture that looks shockingly fresh and recent.

According to the Met’s excellent Heilbrun Timeline for Bruegel, the artist was trying to capture the different seasons in a commisioned series, sic:

For the Antwerp home of the wealthy merchant Niclaes Jongelinck, who owned no less than sixteen of the artist’s works, Bruegel executed a series of paintings representing the Seasons, of which five survive: Gloomy Day, Return of the Herd, Hunters in the Snow (all Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum), Haymaking (Prague, Národní Galerie), and The Harvesters. Though rooted in the legacy of calendar scenes, Bruegel’s emphasis is not on the labors that mark each season but on the atmosphere and transformation of the landscape itself.