Winter landscape with ice skaters and a bird trap

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Winter landscape with ice skaters and a bird trap (Pieter Bruegel the Elder)
Winter landscape with ice skaters and a bird trap
Pieter Bruegel the Elder , 1565
Oil on oak
37 × 55.5 cm
Royal Museums of Fine Arts , Brussels
Winter landscape with ice skaters and a bird trap (Pieter Brueghel the Younger (questionable))
Winter landscape with ice skaters and a bird trap
Pieter Brueghel the Younger (questionable) , 1601
Oil on oak
39 × 57 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum , Vienna

Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters and Bird Trap (also Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters or The Bird Trap ) is a painting by the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder . It depicts a village scene in which people skate on a frozen river and birds have gathered around a bird trap on the snow-covered ground and in bare trees.

Well over a hundred known early versions of the motif exist. A copy from 1565 in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels is considered to be the original . The attribution of this version to Bruegel was, however, controversial for a long time and has still not been conclusively clarified. For some time, Bruegel was also considered the author of a version of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, which is now with reservations attributed to his son Pieter Brueghel the Younger .

Versions

Brussels version

The Brussels version is a 37 by 55.5 centimeter oil painting on oak. At the lower right edge of the picture there is a signature by Bruegel with the date: "BRVEGEL / MDLXV".

The picture came as part of the Dr. F. Delporte in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts (inventory number 8724). Published in 1927, the attribution of the painting to Pieter Bruegel the Elder was doubted early on, among others by Gustav Glück and Will Grohmann . Klaus Ertz developed a theory according to which the original version of the painting could also be a lost work by Bruegel's second son Jan Brueghel the Elder , to which he could have been inspired by Brueghel's return of the hunters . Various scenes of the composition can be found in the middle distance of this painting, which dates from the same year.

Viennese version

The Viennese version is also painted in oil on oak wood. The panel measures around 39 by 57 centimeters, with the frame the painting is 52.2 by 69.5 centimeters and 6 centimeters deep. It is signed and dated on the lower right margin: “P. BRVEGH […] 1601 ”, but the year is barely legible. The work belonged to the Leopold Wilhelm Collection and is located in the picture gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna under inventory number GG_625; the museum attributes it to Pieter Brueghel the Younger with the addition of “questionable” in brackets.

Other versions

Numerous early replicas and copies of the painting exist. It was one of the most popular compositions of Dutch landscape painting and one of the best known of the Brueghel artist dynasty. From their workshops, mainly produced by Pieter the Younger, around 130 known copies of the motif have been preserved, most of which hardly differ. You can find them in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art , the National Museum in Wroclaw and the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht.

description

The painting is mainly in white and light, beige and bluish gray tones. It shows a wintry, snowy landscape. About the upper third of the picture is taken up by the sky. On the horizon, the silhouette of a city can be seen in the distance through the snow-covered plain. The middle ground of the picture is framed by a village backdrop, consisting of almost a dozen reddish houses and a church, all with snow-covered roofs. The village was identified as Sint-Anna-Pede near Brussels, the Gothic village church of which is also reproduced, for example, in Bruegel's The Fall of the Blind . The distant city is said to be Antwerp .

Detail: the bird trap

The entire landscape is isolated with bare trees. The foreground of the picture is divided into two scenes: on the left, in a little more than half the width of the picture, many people enjoy themselves on the ice of a frozen river. The right side of the picture shows a collection of birds around a bird trap on the bank. The people are scattered on the ice. Alone or in small groups, they skate or play, among other things, Colf , a sport similar to golf , and Klootschieten , comparable to ice stock sport . Almost all of them dark, occasionally also dressed in strong red, they stand out clearly from the bright, almost monochrome surroundings. On the right bank of the river there are also dark trees with snow on their bare branches. The leafless branches of several bushes protrude into the picture from below. A particularly tall tree reaches the top of the picture with the full width of its crown. Below this, from the point of view of the beholder to the right of the trunk and slightly forward, stands the eponymous bird trap. It consists of a sloping board supported on the left with a stick. Several black birds peck in the snow in their immediate vicinity, while others sit in the branches of the surrounding vegetation.

The many reproductions of the painting hardly differ from the Brussels version. Figures were added in individual cases.

Interpretations

The painting is considered a prototype and pioneer of a genre of winter landscapes that was widespread and very popular in the 17th century. In particular, the lively characterization of the season through the choice of colors and reproduction of the lighting conditions was fundamental to the genre.

In addition, it is widely believed that Bruegel created a painting with a moralizing tendency by juxtaposing people who go on the ice for pleasure and birds who are lured into a trap by food. The artist draws a comparison between the happy, carefree people and the unsuspecting animals looking for food under the deadly trap. The representations of the human and animal figures are very similar: Both are predominantly black with a few red tones and thus form a strong contrast to the whitish surroundings. Two birds sitting on a branch, which from the observer's point of view protrudes in front of the ice surface, are painted the same size as the ice skaters, who are far away from them in the depicted space, but directly next to them on the canvas. The parallel between the two situations is interpreted as a warning from the artist to be careless and unconcerned about putting himself in danger. At the same time, the painting is an allegory of the lubricitas vitae , the uncertainty of existence.

literature

Web links

Brussels version

Commons : Winter landscape with a bird trap by Pieter Bruegel the Elder  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Viennese version

Commons : Winter landscape with a bird trap by Pieter Brueghel the Younger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Description of the details: Paysage d'hiver avec patineurs et trappe aux oiseaux. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium , archived from the original on August 1, 2012 ; Retrieved September 1, 2011 (French).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Marijnisse, Seidel: Bruegel . 1969, p. 49 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Lot Notes: The Bird Trap. Pieter Brueghel. Christie's , accessed on September 24, 2011 .
  4. ^ Klaus Ertz: Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564–1637 / 38). The paintings with a critical oeuvre catalog . LUCA Verlag Dr. Ertz & Partner oHG, 2000, ISBN 3-923641-37-0 , p. 576 (quoted from Lot Notes: The Bird Trap. Pieter Brueghel . Christie's accessed on September 24, 2011.).
  5. ↑ Winter landscape with a bird trap. Kunsthistorisches Museum , archived from the original on July 14, 2014 ; Retrieved September 1, 2011 .
  6. ↑ Painting from the assembly line . In: art - the art magazine . Issue 2/2002, 2002, pp. 111 ( article online [accessed September 12, 2011]).
  7. ↑ A Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap. Metropolitan Museum of Art , accessed September 22, 2011 .
  8. ^ Brueghel. Wroclaw National Museum , accessed September 24, 2011 (Polish).
  9. ↑ Recent warped. Bonnefantenmuseum , archived from the original on August 18, 2010 ; Retrieved September 24, 2011 (Dutch).
  10. ↑ Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap. In: Web Gallery of Art. Accessed September 24, 2011 .
  11. ^ A b Marijhaben, Seidel: Bruegel . 1969, p. 219 .
  12. ↑ George Bauer, Linda Bauer: The Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap by Pieter Bruegel the Elder . In: The Art Bulletin . Vol. 66, No. 1 , March 1984, p. 145-150 , JSTOR : 3050398 .
  13. ^ Robert L. Bonn: Painting life: the art of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder . 2006, ISBN 978-1-884092-12-1 , pp. 4th ff . ( Excerpt online [accessed on September 22, 2011]). Excerpt online ( memento from January 18, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )