Provenance: private collection
This allegorical representation of spring, dominated in the foreground by the preparation of a field of flowers originates from the cycle of seasons created by...
read moreProvenance: private collection
This allegorical representation of spring, dominated in the foreground by the preparation of a field of flowers originates from the cycle of seasons created by Pieter Breughel the Elder towards the end of his life.
Unfortunately, Brueghel the Elder was unable to complete the cycle. The iconographical diffusion of such cycles provided respectively by Pieter II and Pieter III was thus based for the last two seasons on drawings by Hans Bol.
The fact remains however that a drawing made by the founder of the dynasty himself, currently in the collection of the Albertina and engraved in 1570 by Hieronymus Cock furnishes the point of departure for the spring segment under consideration here. Both Pieter II and Pieter III appear to have been inspired by the model engraved by Cock: as a result, it is quite natural that their compositions invert the elements drawn by Brueghel the Elder, showing them in mirror image, an element which gives a natural explanation to the fact e.g. that the peasant digging in the foreground is, in this case, left-handed.
While remaining generally faithful to his grandfather’s compositional model, Pieter III has made of it a personal work in which he gives free rein to his bold sense of colour harmonies, at the same time as he introduces subtle but significant variations to it.
The foreground is dominated by the preparation of a field of flowers, an activity that illustrates the month of March, and that Brueghel III decorates in this case, in a somewhat anticipatory and premature fashion, with tulip blossoms already in bloom. Two men busy cutting vines provide an additional association with the month of March.
In a sort of linear tri-dimensional temporality, the activities connected with the month of April are shown in the middle ground and in the background on the right: shearing sheep, bee keeping, and further still, sowing the fields.
May is depicted, by contrast, in a more amusing if reduced guise. Like his father, but in contrast to his grandfather who employed a much more refined gathering of ladies and gentlemen enjoying a country picnic, Brueghel III chooses to show a scene of genuinely popular merrymaking...
In this decision, we perceive Brueghel III’s deliberate will to accent the overall expressive character of the composition, whether it be in its painterly execution or in his choice and development of motifs more akin to his own artistic temperament.
1589 - Anvers - vers 1638/39
The son of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Pieter Brueghel III was accepted as a free master in the Antwerp Painters' Guild in 1608. He began his training in his father's...
read more1589 - Anvers - vers 1638/39
The son of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Pieter Brueghel III was accepted as a free master in the Antwerp Painters' Guild in 1608. He began his training in his father's workshop, where he remained, and which he ran from 1630 onwards.
In spite of the 40 years that had passed between the death of the illustrious Pieter Brueghel the Elder and his grandson Pieter Brueghel III's becoming a master, the demand for all things Brueghelian continued to increase: since the originals remained inaccessible and jealously guarded within the collections of princes and/or nobility, admirers had no choice but to obtain copies or, more correctly, variations from the workshop of his descendants.
It is thanks to this abundant production that evidence survives of certain original
compositions by Pieter Brueghel the Elder which had been lost, as well as shedding light on the connections between the workshops of Pieter Brueghel II and III and the work of other masters such as David Vinckboons, Jacob Savery, Marten van Cleve and Jacob Grimmer.
Even if original compositions by Pieter Brueghel III are rare, and his work is sometimes confused with that of his father, it nonetheless bears its own characteristic imprint : inclined towards a nearly abstract and distinctly modern distillation of the palette, Brueghel III intentionally accentuates the intensity of the hues. By the same token,
in the sometimes heightened expressiveness of the faces, he succeeds in adding a personal note to the most satirical side of the Brueghelian sensibility.
