Masters of Art: Bruegel

by Wolfgang Stechow

Traces the development of the elder Bruegel's style through a text and numerous reproductions of his paintings

Genres: Art, Biography, Nonfiction

126 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1968

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of the Masters of Arts Series, this outstanding coffee table book contains a detailed overview of the life and work of the great Netherlandish artist, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who spent his most fruitful years in Brussels from 1553 to 1569. Included also are forty full-page color prints of Bruegel paintings along with a detailed essay on each by art historian Wolfgang Stechow. For the purpose of my review, I will focus on one particularly fascinating painting: Children’s Games. Thus, in addition to all of the pics I have included here, below are quotes from Wolfgang Stechow’s essay along with my modest comments:

“In Bruegel’s Vienna painting of 1560, children stand for adults, and it is the folly of adults that is chastised in a guise which makes no effort to disguise: these are children only by size and (partly) by dress.” ---------- One feature of medieval society and culture I have always found disturbing, how young teenagers - thirteen, fourteen and fifteen-year olds - married and became parents. One well-documented consequence of children having children was flagrant and widespread child abuse.



“When five of them pull the hair of a single victim and when they kill flies, they act more savagely than normal children would.” ---------- Thank you, Wolfgang Stechow. This has been my sense in viewing this painting, although I lacked the background of an art historian to adequately articulate my perception.



“The trundling of a hoop and the whipping of a top become frantic efforts; among the hundreds of children’s faces that this picture contains, there is not a single one that expresses childlike enjoyment of what the body is doing in its compulsive action.” ---------- Again, this is one aspect I find most troubling – how men and women lack a sense of ease or harmony, even when they are engaged in play, which ideally should be a time of joy and relaxation.



“The gnomelike figures resemble puppets manipulated by an invisible hand exactly as do Bruegel’s adults.” ---------- I take the author’s statement here as underscoring how the people in the painting are so constrained and constricted by their suffocating society, they are bound rather than free when expressing emotions and inhabiting their bodies.

“This is a panorama of folly rather than of childhood.” ---------- And that’s folly not in innocent foolishness but in brutish stupidity.



“The top of a central pyramid, the sides of which are emphasized by the house wall and the diagonal part of the red fence on the left and the long beam and the group of boys playing leapfrog on the right, is marked by a child bride procession seen strictly from the front.” ---------- With the dozens and dozens and dozens of children in this painting, the artist provides a clear structure by a precise, subtle underlying architecture – quite the master stroke.



“It is a relief to escape from the frantic actions of the main part of the picture to the brilliantly and sketchily painting landscape at the upper left which increasingly frees itself from its human burden.” ----------- As Wolfgang Stechow goes out to say, in a world filled to the brim with the folly of man, Bruegel envisioned one redeeming feature - nature left to herself.

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book that is recommended for its beautiful prints of his work. Most people will be familiar with his work – the busy scenes of villages, the infamous Hunters in the Snow and the ingenious Fall of Icarus and this book shows them to their full effect, his major works having full page close-ups of key features to accompany the full picture.

The book takes us on Brueghel’s travels, illustrating the journey with his sketches and paintings of places that he passed or stayed in. I’m no Brueghel scholar so the text did teach me a lot about him, although to be fair much of it was supposition rather than fact as the man himself was something of an enigma. There is debate as to whether several of his major works, including Hunters in the Snow, are part of a cycle depicting the months of the year of which some are missing. The works are also deceptively cheery, the locals going about their business with splashes of red and blue seem bucolic until you look closer and see the strange activities they are engaging in (my favourite is the scene that illustrates numerous Dutch proverbs of the time, some of which still remain a mystery as to their meaning) and the blank, pudgy faces of the people who show the weaker aspctss of human behaviour.

This book showed me the range of Brueghel’s art and showed the man to be as elusive as the meanings of his works and it was a good starting place to inflame the curiosity to read about him more widely.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bruegel blends pessimism about human sinfulness, wry humor, nature as redemptive. Stechow’s analysis is good.

[Boweavil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Serious, scholarly, well thought out, and sometimes controversial overview of Bruegel's paintings. There is not as much information about his drawings, but this is still a great resource.

[Jana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful color plates of my favourite painter's work. What's not to love? I'm very pleased this one is my very own...I can return to it often.

[Chris Gager · Rating 5 out of 5]

PB was an early master of realism painting. Apparently he wasn't interested in the "historical" stuff. I wonder what his "market" was?