After I studied the art history of Renaissance paintings, I decided to talk about Pieter Bruegel’s painting, “The Harvesters” from MET. I am fascinated by his painting, “Hunters in the Snow” that we analyzed in class. Pieter Bruegel painted a series of paintings depicting the months of the year. “Hunters in the snow” and “The Harvesters” are the most well-known works from this series.
The first impression of this painting is the gold color dominated the whole picture. It immediately gives viewer the feeling of autumn. Bruegel did very carefully to pick the color to represent the month. Similar in many Bruegel’s paintings, there are actions in front of the painting which draws the viewers’ eyes to focus on different particular part of the vast painting of elaborate landscape.
A half field of wheat has been cut and stacked. There is a diagonal line across the picture that divides the picture into two pictorial space. The work depicts a view on peasant’s life. In one space, a group of peasants are resting under the tree containing amazing details. One of them is sleeping showing his exhaustion from his labor, one is holding the wine jar and drinking by the neck, some are eating bread and butter with fruits as dessert while others eat a large bowl of food. One of them is staring at the viewer seem like he is shocked by our presence. It plays with the viewer’s subject dynamic. At the same time on the other side, one peasant is on the pear tree trying to shake down pears with his partners helping to gather the fruits together. On the other pictorial space, an open path directs the eye towards a further distance where monks are bathing in the pool, villagers are playing a game on the grass. Even further there is lake with sailboats and unknown land. The painting shows a macro story with micro details.
The picture consists of some main elements: peasants, haystacks, trees and far scenery of highlands occupying the upper portion of the picture, which is the unique description of the details of life of Netherlanders peasants, which takes up the lower part of the picture. Another structural relationship is that the highland and lowland are approximately equal in the picture from left to right along the diagonal line. It is one of the most common patterns in Western painting in that period. However, if we look further, we will find out that Bruegel not only skillfully avoids the competition between the two layers of structure, but also integrates the two layers in an orderly way.
They are not just engaged in ordinary activities. In the front view, peasants have round faces and sturdy bodies. They squat and bending over. It is quite different from the Italian renanissence at the same time. He didn’t pick the human body from the classical past, instead, he painted the everyday, ordinary figures. Each of the figure cannot be identified. It is not showing the specific person, it reveals the normal life peasant life of the 1500s annoymously and authentically. There is a figure walking out of the haystack with a bright white shirt on consisting a perfect match to the yellow scenary. We then move to the middle ground where there are three women walking on the path along the line of the arch. Your eyes are pushed to follow the arch towards the end to see what’s going on there. Bruegel understand how to work with geometry shapes to go along with the narrative. For historical context, during the 15th century, artists of the new era are no longer satisfied with inheriting the creative mode of their predecessors. They begin to have an interest in the reality around them, to have a new perspective on what is happening around them and begin to depict people with flesh and blood and the tendency of realism has been showing in the works from time to time.
To cover the background of the Dutch painter, Pieter Brugel, he was born in 1525 in Netherland. He was first taught and inspired by his father-in-law in painting. Brugel later travelled paying attention to details on scenaries in his visits which he uses in his paintings. During the time Brugel was working on his series, there were tension due to the Protestant Reformation riots across the Netherlands. In his series we can see that the socio-religious conflict has influenced his work.
