That legacy was elevated and propagated by the market and the commentariat and was reflected in the work of later artists on both sides of the Low Countries dividing line.
The fall of Antwerp to the Duke of Parma in 1585 signaled the effective partition of the Low Countries into the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces and precipitated the flight of non-Catholics to the north, to the Pfalz region of Germany, and to England. Many of those fleeing Flanders were artists and, as the figure below shows, were the conduits for the transmission of Bruegel's influence across the Schildt-Meuse-Rhine line and into the genesis of the art of the Dutch Golden Age.
I treat the observed Bruegel artistic influence in the Spanish Netherlands in this post.
Hans Bol
Hans Bol (1534 - 1593) played a major role in the further development and spread of Bruegel the Elder's motifs and themes on both sides of the Low Countries dividing line. I will cover his contributions in the United Provinces in a future post.
Bol was born in Mechelen but eventually made his way to Antwerp. He was acclaimed as a painter, print artist, miniaturist, and draftsman who produced works in the areas of landscapes, genre paintings, and allegorical and biblical scenes.
In the area of landscapes, Bol sought to depict the naturalness that was a hallmark of Bruegel's work but told the tale from a lower perspective. Bol produced a Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, as did Bruegel the Elder, but his rendition took up the tale earlier in the cycle and provided the viewer the aforementioned lower perspective. Note also the technique of brown tones to the front, green in the mid-ground, and icy blue in the background.
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| Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
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| Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Hans Bol |
Bol showed a preference for producing "months-of-the-year" series, a genre which had been resurrected by Bruegel the Elder in his series done for his patron Jongelinck in 1565.
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| December Hans Bol |
Bruegel The Elder had begun a series of "seasons" drawings for Hieronymus Cock prints but had only completed the Spring and Summer installations prior to his death. Bol was approached by Cock in 1570 with a request that he complete the designs for Autumn and Winter. The designs were completed and the series engraved by Pieter van de Hayden. Through the completion of this commission, Bol had become the literal and figurative successor to Bruegel the Elder.
Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder
Bruegel still served as a model for Flemish painters, driven in no small part by the works of his sons (Pieter the Younger and Jan the Elder). Most of Pieter the Younger's work was comprised of copies of his father's compositions (both drawings and paintings) while Jan, who sometimes collaborated with Ruebens and other contemporaries, was much more innovative.
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| The Alchemist, 1558, original etching Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
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| Copy of The Alchemist Pieter Bruegel the Younger |
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| Bath of the Nymphs Jan Bruegel the Elder |
Peter Paul Rubens
Rubens occasionally used Bruegel the Elder as a model for scenes of peasant festivity and panoramic landscapes with peasant laborers. Rubens was known to have owned eight of Bruegel the Elder's works.
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| Landscape with Milkmaids and Cattle, 1618 Peter Paul Rubens |
Adriaen Brouwer
Brouwer was born in Flanders in 1605 but had moved to Amsterdam by 1625 and, therein, had studied under the tutelage of the great Dutch painter Frans Hals. Brouwer was somewhat dissolute, spending a lot of his time smoking and drinking in taverns. Brouwer returned to Flanders around 1631 and worked for a few days in the Rubens workshop but the relationship was short-lived as his drunkenness quickly became a problem.
Brouwer painted mostly peasant scenes and his work was well regarded by his peers. Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a major influence on the work of Brouwer (artble.com):
- Informed the bold and clear coloring of his early works
- Informed his choice of subject matter -- painting the daily life of beggars and peasants
- He copied the Bruegel style of non-facial detail and bare outline which gave a general impression of the individual
- His early tavern scenes contain the same simplicity of forms and coloring as does Bruegel's.
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| The Bitter Draught, c. 1635 Adriaen Brouwer |
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| The Smokers, c. 1637 Adriaen Brouwer |
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| Peasants Brawling over Cards, c. 1636 Adriaen Brouwer |
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| Youth making a face, c. 1636 Adriaen Brouwer |
David Teniers the Younger
David Teniers the Younger (1610 - 1690) was the most famous of the 17th-century painters of peasant life, providing a much more "refined" version of Brouwer's peasant scenes. Teniers was born in Antwerp and was most likely taught by his father. Unlike his father, Teniers enjoyed international popularity during his lifetime and, by 1651, was employed by Archduke Leopold William as the Court Painter and Keeper of the Art Collection.
Teniers the Younger links back to Bruegel the Elder through his marriage to Jan Bruegel the Elder's daughter Anna and through his hewing to the Brouwer line in his early works (Wikipedia):
- Similarity of subject matter, technique, color, and composition
- Similar gross types placed in smoky, dimly lit taverns
- Similar monochrome tonality.
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| Peasants playing cards in an interior, 1630 - 45 David Teniers the Younger |
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| Smokers in an interior, c. 1637 David Teniers the Younger |
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| The Alchemist, c. 1650 David Teniers the Younger |
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| Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his gallery in Brussels, 1650 - 52 Dvid Teniers the Younger |
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| Monkeys smoking and drinking, c. 1660 David Teniers the Younger |
Joos de Momper
Joos de Momper (1564 - 1635) was one of the leading Flemish landscape painter of his day. Taught by his father Bartholomew, he entered the Antwerp Guild of St Luke at 17 years of age. All indications are that he travelled to Italy in the 1580s.
In addition to the large number (500) of works credited to him (suggesting extensive workshop participation), de Momper also worked collaboratively with other artists to include Jan Brueghel the Elder and Jan Brueghel the Younger. Joos utilized the Flemish landscape coloration schema wherein the shades of the image follow the passage of the sun through the atmosphere, resulting in warm tones in the foreground and cold hues towards the rear.
"De Momper's works are chiefly inspired by the steep craggy alpine slopes and high rock masses depicted in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's work. His closeness to Jan Brueghel the Elder could have played a role in his exposure to the Bruegel idiom. This is also seen in some of the motifs of de Momper's work which go back to Pieter Bruegel inventions such as winter landscape and grain harvests."
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| Extensive Mountainous Landscape with Travellers, c. 1620 Joos de Momper |
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| Winter Landscape Joos de Momper |
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| The Tower of Babel Joos de Momper |
Sebastian Vrancx
Sebastian Vrancx (1573 - 1647) was a Flemish painter known primarily for battle scenes, a pioneer of this genre in the Netherlands. His linkage to Breugel the Elder is through his series of paintings representing the Four Seasons of the year. Bruegel had "founded this genre as an independent category of painting with his influential cycle of the Months painted for the home of his patron Nicolaes Jongelinck."
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| Spring Sebastian Vrancx |
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| Summer Sebastian Vrancx |
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| Autumn Sebastian Vrancx |
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| Winter Sebastian Vrancx |
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Pieter Bruegel the Elder combined the landscape principles of Patinir and Bosch with his knowledge of the deployment of the mountains in the Alps to create a unique mountain landscape style. That landscape style is reflected in the work of de Momper 60 years later.
Bruegel established painting of the peasantry as "a thing" and Brouwer and Teniers the Younger ran with it deep into the heart of the Baroque period. Brouwer's renditions of the peasantry was the most brutal of the ones that we have encountered and might be the rationale behind the relative elegance of the Teniers renditions.
I have shown Vrancx replicating Bruegel in his painting of the series The Seasons and de Momper providing his rendition of the Tower of Babel.
There can be no doubt that the works of Bruegel the Elder influenced the efforts of many high-level, 17th-century Flemish artists. I will examine the influence on the Dutch painters in my next post.
©EverythingElse 238
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