The Corn Harvest by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Corn is harvested in August - however what's in the landscape painting of a corn harvest varies according to where the artist painted (see explanation at the end).  In Europe corn means grain.

 Die Kornernte  (1564) by Pieter Breugel the Elder (1526 - 1569)
(a.k.a. The Harvesters / The corn harvest / The grain harvest)
Oil on wood,
Overall, including added strips at top, bottom, and right, 46 7/8 x 63 3/4 in. (119 x 162 cm);
original painted surface 45 7/8 x 62 7/8 in. (116.5 x 159.5 cm)
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Paintings of the Corn Harvest in August

The most famous  painting of a corn harvest is that shown at the top of this post.

What do we know about 'The Corn Harvest'?

• This painting was painting by  Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1564, when he was nearly 40 years old - some 4 years before he died in 1569.
• It's one panel in a famous series of six paintings by Bruegel called "The Months". These paintings each different times of the year. This is the fourth panel in the series and represents late summer (July/August).  See also other paintings in the series which have featured on this blog.:
• Winter Landscape: Hunters in the snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
• Breugal "The Return of the Herd" (Autumn Landscape #12)
• The "Months" series were commissioned by Niclaes Jongelinck and were used as a frieze for a room in his home.  Jongelinck was a merchant, tax collector and art collector who lived in Antwerp
• The painting is a view of "what is" in terms of real life.  There's no sense of a need for a religious story or pretext for painting the landscape.  The emphasis is on realism rather than the religious. This is the case with all the paintings in the series - which is why Bruegel's landscape paintings are said to represent a watershed in the history of Western Art.   
• The landscape is a dominant theme within the painting - but it's animated by the people who populate the picture plane.  The painting focuses on the harvest - the harvesters are in the foreground, their community, their church and nature in general are in the background.  The workers in the field are depicted in a naturalistic way - they are shown working, exhausted, lying or sitting, eating or sleeping.  As with all other paintings in this series there is a dominant colour - in this instance it's the yellow of the grain crop being harvested.  
• This painting now resides in the Metorpolitan Museum of Art in New York (Other paintings in the Months series are located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and Lobkowicz Collection, Prague)

The meaning of corn

"Corn" means different things in different countries.

• In the USA the term refers to maize (i.e. sweet corn)
• however in Europe, the older use of the word "corn" relates to grain and cereal crops - such wheat, oats and barley (ie maize is called maize and corn on the cob is called corn on the cob!).  That's because Europeans didn't have a name for the maize crop when they first encountered it in the New World.  So it acquired the generic name for all grain crops!

Here's the definition of corn from Cambridge Dictionaries online

B1 [U] UK (the seeds of) plants, such as wheat, maize, oats, and barley, that can be used to produce flour:a sheaf of corngrains of corn› [U] US the seeds of the maize plant, or the plant itself

Winter Landscape - Adoration of the Magi by Pieter Bruegel

Adoration of the Kings (1567) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Adoration of the Three Wise Men in the snow
Pieter Bruegel the Younger

Two paintings of the same scene by father and son of the same name - Pieter Bruegel - Elder and Younger.  Pieter Bruegel the Elder is the superior painter. 

Making the life and manners of peasants the main focus of a work was rare in painting in Brueghel's time, and he was a pioneer of the Netherlandish genre painting. His earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of the rituals of village life—including agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games—are unique windows on a vanished folk culture and a prime source of iconographic evidence about both physical and social aspects of 16th century life
Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Wikipedia

What I love about the landscape/townscape paintings of Piter Breugel the Elder is the attention to the detail in every part of the painting.  Not so much in terms of the realism of the painting but in terms of observation of the reality of a winter landscape (eg extracting water from an icy pond) and the tasks and activities of daily life which go on irrespective of the the momentous event portrayed or the fact it's being painted.

I always feel as if I'm sat up in a nearby tree looking down on what's going on.

There's a bit of a sense of 'painting by numbers' in the paintings of his son.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger also copied the works his father had created by using a technique called pouncing.

Links: 

• Pieter Bruegel the Elder on wikipedia
• Pieter Bruegel the Younger  on wikipedia

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Seasons Greetings

I'd like to take this oppportunity to wish the subscribers to this blog 

a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Dutch Landscapes

Image of the Dutch Landscapes exhibition website

Diutch landscape paintyers have been very influential in terms of their influence over landscape painters who came after them - such as Turner and Constable.

Today marks the opening of an exhibition of Dutch Landscapes at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. The exhibition runs from 30th April 2010 until 9th January 2011.

The exhibition will then transfer to and be shown at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace from April to October 2011.

an exhibition of 42 works that draws on the Royal Collection’s rich holdings of Dutch ‘Golden Age’ painting. By the 17th century, landscape painting was well established as a distinct art form and one in which Netherlandish artists excelled. Artists turned to the countryside and to the sea to convey a pride in their homeland – the newly formed Dutch United Provinces. While some painters looked to their native surroundings for subject matter, others found inspiration in the mountainous vistas and golden light of Italy.

The exhibition includes outstanding examples by the great masters of landscape, including Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, Jan van der Heyden and Meyndert Hobbema.

Two resources are available to those who can't visit the exhibition in person are:

• the catalogue Dutch Landscapes by Desmond Shawe-Taylor, with contributions by Jennifer Scott (Royal Collection Publications, 176 pages, 110 colour illustrations). Exhibition price £14.95 from Royal Collection shops and online.
• the exhibition microsite where images if the landscapes can be seen. This part of the site works very nicely. The images are none too big but they are well labelled and there is an explanation of each painting. There's a long or a summarised version depending on whether you want the emphasis on the text or the image.

I'll have to wait to 2011 to se this but I'll certainly be visiting in when it comes to London.