Pieter Bruegel The Harvesters

The Harvesters was a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1540-1603). The Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a Dutch Renaissance painter and printmaker from Brabant. The Dutch Renaissance painting represents the 16th-century response to Italian Renaissance art in the Low Countries. Bruegel was born at a time of extensive change in Western Europe. At that period, making the life and activity of peasants the main focus of a work was rare, and he was a pioneer of the genre painting. He was a passionate observer of nature in all its forms, including human nature, with a genius for narrative and the defining gesture. He was famous for the status of landscape painting in 1565. His paintings were about everyday life, an unusual topic for that time. This painting emphasized the realism rather than the religious. It is one of the famous paintings in Western art. His paintings showed the styles of that time. Most of his paintings were highly detailed with peasants as well
as children. His peasants were usually stocky and anonymous. This painting is part of a series showing the seasons of the year. The series of painting include six works, five of which survive: The Gloomy Day, Hunters in the Snow, The Return of the Herd, Haymaking. This painting is currently located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The main theme of this painting is a rural life of harvest. It represents the months of August and September. It shows a hot mid-summer day, perhaps near Lake Geneva. It describes a ripe field of wheat that has been partially cut. It is large. The size of the painting is 461/2” by 631/2”, four tall feet by five feet wide. It is made of an Oil on wood. He used opaque colors in this painting. Landscape colors are fascinating. The colors are obscured, and it creates a sense of depth. This painting uses an atmospheric perspective. In the painting, similar colors were used to create harmony and help the entire landscape to unite. The painting used bright, warm colors that reflect happiness and peaceful atmosphere. Also, the brush works are not noticeable and even. He applied the paint thinly. The texture of landscape and foliage provides interest. All the tree's leaves, wheat, and branches have textures. It is usually smooth and soft. The small village in the background is complex, detailed, and carefully textured. It emphasizes an area, but it is much less detailed than the resting harvesters in the main field. There is shading in the painting. It makes the painting look more realistic. You can see the shading at people's clothes, tree's branches, and sheaf. When I look at this painting, I look at the big tree first which is located in a slightly center of this painting.
He draws this tree look closer by drawing big scale and proportion. Horizontal lines give a sense of space. The landscape is made up of gently curved lines. Most shapes are simple and flat. There are pronounced verticals in the composition. He draws portraits of real people. Resting and eating harvesters in the painting occupy small proportions, it led us to think that the landscape is the main subject. There are the eight people who get together and eat food under the tree. The hungry people in the ground cram food into mouths, drunk with the great gulp from bowls, and two people who look tired. A woman gleaner leans over sheaf. The attitudes of the people in the field are as real as those of the harvesters at their meal under the tree. In the background, there are small churches, boats, an idyllic village where children are playing and thatched cottages. It seems pretty far away from a
viewer.