Dated and signed: "1618 P.BREVGHEL" on the window of the right hand house.
Provenance: private collection.
The panel of the Child’s Wedding that we present, like the similar version held at...
read moreDated and signed: "1618 P.BREVGHEL" on the window of the right hand house.
Provenance: private collection.
The panel of the Child’s Wedding that we present, like the similar version held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, depicts a little girl, the Whitsun bride, adorned with flowers and ribbons and escorted by the village children. According to the tradition, she goes from house to house singing songs about the watercress and receives presents.
Young girls who look like miniature adults due to their small silhouette surround the young girl, dressed in her best clothes. The hems of their skirts are turned up over their heads, like their mothers, and reveal the awful condition of their clothes underneath.
The heroine of the day, the Whitsun bride, is recognisable with her wedding crown in her golden locks and traditional adult wedding clothes. She walks, hands together and eyes down, looking serious, surrounded by two bridesmaids wearing spring flowers. Two child musicians playing the drums and the violin lead the parade in this village street. Here, Pieter the Younger, has obviously taken much pleasure to illustrate the young peoples’ mischievousness and malice: in the front row there obviously is an air of formal respectability, but for the rest the wedding is not very orderly and there is some rowdiness.
One young girl even makes faces in an effort to break the serious expression on the bride’s face. Behind the bridal suite, which takes up two-thirds of the foreground, there are scenes of the village streets, one of the distinctive signs of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, with a quality of detail and the small figures animating the village countryside, in the same style as his father painted. Various innocent stories of everyday peasant life are depicted: towards the middle, a man is holding a child’s hand and joins the suite, another one is unloading a cart, a woman holds out her arm to catch a ‘lost’ child who runs towards her arms outstretched; in the foreground on the right, a woman is feeding pigs whilst a child is relieving himself in front of a pig. The presence of a gentry couple, elegantly and richly dressed, underlines the ideological difference between the village and town classes. The lady, in a very determined way holds back her daughter who would like to join the village procession. The other adults look over the children as they pass with interest and affection.
All these figures that animate the panel are typical of Pieter the Younger as we have already explained. However, Glück and Marlier, recreated a similar copy in the layout and the content right down to the barking dog, with the composition belonging to a contemporary of Brueghel the Younger, David Vinckbons, whom they considered to be the spiritual creator of this amusing scene of the children.
Brussels 1564 - Antwerp 1638
The eldest son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, he settled early on in Antwerp where he received his training in the studio of the landscape artist, Gillis van...
read moreBrussels 1564 - Antwerp 1638
The eldest son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, he settled early on in Antwerp where he received his training in the studio of the landscape artist, Gillis van Coninxloo. He was made a Master in 1585. He was only five years old when his father died in 1569, so he was not able to initiate his son in painting. His mother, the daughter of painter Pieter Coecke d’Alost and she herself a painter, died when he was only an adolescent, but it seems she contributed to his apprenticeship. In 1588 he married Elisabeth Goddelet with whom he had seven children.
He was nicknamed "Hell" Brueghel even though scenes of hell were an exception in his work. There were two sides to Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s work. In the beginning, he returned to a great number of his father’s paintings and developed several versions. He added his personal touch by introducing variants, including the importance he gave to landscape, as well as his own colours that were livelier and of greater purity than those used by his father.
The second period began around 1615-1620. During this time, he asserted his personality through the creation of original paintings, which met with great success at this time, also inspiring several replicas. His son Pieter Brueghel III and Frans Snyders, the famous painter of still lifes and animals, were his students. Besides prolonging the work of his father, Pieter Brueghel II held a significant position in the 17th century especially through his fine brushwork and the purity of his colours. He influenced every Flemish painter in his century.
He had a particularly fruitful career, extending over nearly half a century, and was highly successful during his lifetime.
