The hunters in the snow

The hunters in the snow
Pieter Bruegel the Elder , 1565
Oil on oak
117 × 162 cm
Art History Museum

The Hunters in the Snow is a 117 × 162 cm painting of the seasons by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from 1565 and the first known large European painting with snow. It belongs to the collection of the Vienna Art History Museum and is also known as the return of the hunters (room 10, inv. No. GG 1838).

The paintings

Content and structure

signature

The colors white and greenish gray dominate. The dark earth-colored hunters with their dogs turn their backs on the viewer, the figures cast no shadows, the sun has apparently set or is covered by clouds. The row of trees that the hunters and dogs trudge along marks the beginning of a diagonal up to the rugged mountains at the top right corner, at the foot of which there is a castle. In the lower right corner there is a watermill with a frozen wheel and a bridge that a brushwood collector crosses. Far left in front of an inn, farmers have lit a fire to scorch a pig . Fire can be seen once more: a chimney is burning in the diagonal between the hunters and the mountains (top left half of the picture) . A winding river draws your gaze past details, such as ice skaters or a church, up to the top left to a town on a bay. Not only the water bodies in the village are frozen over, but also the bay, which is clear from the greenish color and the people and carts on it. A bird trap is set up near the center of the picture and in the foreground the snow load is pressing down a blackberry bush .

The picture is signed in the lower center with “BRVEGEL. MDLXV ".

• 

  The returning hunters

• 

  Bridge and mill

• 

  A chimney fire

• 

  View of the city on the bay

motive

While older monthly pictures mainly show seasonal activities, winter nature dominates here and people are either tiny or depicted as marginalized. Everything that is alive, such as people, animals and trees, is dark and thus reinforces the impression of hostile wasteland. The prey of the hunters is small, they could only kill one fox. The inscription on the pub sign reads: "Dit is inden Hert" (Zum Hirschen). The scene above it with Saint Eustachius , the patron saint of hunters , fits in with it . The picture is crooked - this is obviously an allusion to the lack of luck in the hunt. Simple farmers were only allowed to hunt foxes, rabbits and birds, hence the bird trap near the center of the picture, which, together with the people on the ice surfaces, is supposed to point out the winter dangers for people and animals. Not only ice skating are shown, but also Colf and Klootschieten . Colf was played with a wooden bat and the aim was to shoot a ball either as far as possible or as close as possible to a target. It could not only be played on ice, but also grass and is therefore related to modern golf . The klootschieten was to carry a wooden disc as close as possible to a target. It corresponds to today's ice stock sport .

Rugged mountains and mountain landscapes often appear in Bruegel's work, even if this does not match the topography of his Flemish homeland. The artist had used the way back from an early long stay in Italy to travel to the Alps , presumably through southern Switzerland , and the high mountains must have made a deep impression on him. An alpine mountain range with a castle / palace also appears on another picture of the season ( The gloomy day [early spring]). In contrast to the biblical account, the artist relocated Paul's conversion , a motif taken from the Acts of the Apostles , to a rugged high mountain area.

• 

  Scene in front of the inn

• 

  The bird trap

• 

  Villagers doing winter sports

• 

  Mountains and castle

Classification and copies

Copy of Pieter Brueghel the Younger

It is part of a series of six pictures, because at that time there were six seasons in the Netherlands: early spring, spring, early summer, midsummer, autumn and winter as in the picture discussed above. The prevailing view today is that the picture depicts December and January, completing the series. Two more pictures from the series The Dark Day and The Return of the Herd (Autumn) are also in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. A total of five images have been preserved: The Hay Harvest (early summer) is in the Lobkowitz Palace in Prague Castle and The Grain Harvest (midsummer) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum there is a copy that Pieter Brueghel the Younger freely made based on his father's model.

History of the series

Bruegel originally made the series for the art collector Nicolaes Jonghelinck in Antwerp . As early as 1594, however, the then Spanish governor Archduke Ernst received it as a gift. In the inventory of the estate, the pictures are mentioned on July 17, 1595 as “Six Taffel, from 12 months of the Jars von Bruegel”. Thereafter, the pictures probably ended up in the Rudolph II collection in Prague - it is certain that they belonged to the inventory of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm's collection in the Stallburg in 1659 . After that, more messages are missing. Only in a catalog from 1884 is it noted that the picture was in the depot together with The gloomy day and was therefore not listed earlier. See also: The Seasons Pictures

reception

The painting plays an important role in the films Solaris by Andrei Tarkowski and Melancholia by Lars von Trier .

See also

• List of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Individual evidence

1. ↑ kunsthistorisches museum - interactive: visit Gemäldegalerie 2nd edition May 2007 ISBN 978-3-902491-09-1
2. ↑ Christian Gräf - The Winter Pictures by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Ä. , Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller 2009 p. 21 ISBN 978-3-639-12775-1
3. ↑ Hunters in the Snow (Winter) . The painting in the KHM image database (viewed January 28, 2017)
4. ^ Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen: Pieter Bruegel the Elder Ä. around 1525–1569. Peasants fools and demons . Cologne: Taschen Verlag 1999 p. 63 ISBN 3-8228-6590-7
5. ^ The winter pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Ä. P. 20 f.
6. ^ The winter pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Ä., P. 27
7. ^ The winter pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Ä. P. 51 f.
8. ^ The winter pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Ä., Pp. 28 to 30
9. ↑ lobkowicz.com: Highlights of The Lobkowicz Collections , accessed on January 28, 2017
10. ↑ metmuseum.org ( accessed on May 16, 2020)
11. ^ Tokyo Fuji Art Museum - "Hunters in the Snow" , accessed October 26, 2012
12. ↑ residence.aec.at: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569) - The hay harvest ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on January 28, 2017 
13. ^ The winter pictures by Pieter Breugels the Elder. Ä. P. 12f
14. ↑ Bertram Kaschek: The White Trap In: Weltkunst, 81 (2011), No. 14. pp. 76–79 ( Solaris and Melancholia ). Accessed January 28, 2017

Web links

Commons : The Hunters in the Snow  - Collection of images, videos and audio files