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Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
c.1525 - 1569
Pieter Bruegel the Elder or Brueghel
was a Flemish painter known for his landscapes and peasant scenes. There are records that he was born in Broghel near Breda, but it is unsure whether the Dutch town of Breda or the Belgian town of Bree, called Breda in Latin, is meant. From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel.
He was an apprentice of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, whose daughter Mayke he later married, and was in 1551 accepted as a master in the painters' guild of Antwerp. He travelled to Italy soon after, and then returned to Antwerp before settling in Brussels permanently 10 years later. He died there on 9 September 1569.
He was the father of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder who both became painters, but as they were still infants when their father died neither received any training directly from him.
Brueghel the Elder specialised in landscapes populated by peasants, painted in a simpler style than the Italianate art that prevailed at the time. The most obvious influence on his art is the older Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch. He is nicknamed 'Peasant Brueghel' to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty, but is also the one generally meant when the context does not make clear which "Brueghel" is being referred to.
He is often credited as being the first western painter to paint landscapes for their own sake, rather than as a backdrop to a religious alegory.
Pieter Bruegel
peasants at play
1525-1569
As near to animation as the sixteenth century could get are Bruegels pictures of peasants having a laugh as they unwind after their toil. Bruegel's paintings have more drunks per square centimetre than Covent garden on a friday evening but they are friendly welcoming drinkers who invite the viewer into a life he will never know to meet his friends and have a laugh with the bar maids.
made when Italy was sophisticated and reborn, his pictures must have been a shock to the eyes of any travelliong Florentine, but in his home Brussels he sold well and was a success. He may have been called Peasant beacsue of his subject matter, but he was an expert painter and mimic with a wonderful pallete.
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Breugel".