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

'July' by Pol Limbourg (Summer Landscape #1)

I'm returning to the representation of the seasons and months of the year in paintings of landscapes.  In part, I do this because I very much enjoy records of the land at different times of the year but also as encouragement to landscape painters to create more paintings recording the land in specific seasons and months.

This is Juillet (July) in the body of work known as Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry created by the flemish painters, the Limbourg Brothers working for John, Duc de Berry (1340-1416) the third son of King John II of France. It's been identified as the work of Paul (or Pol) Limbourg.

Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry Folio 7, verso: July
illumination on vellum
Height: 22.5 cm (8.9 in). Width: 13.6 cm (5.4 in)
Musée Condé, Chantilly, France

This particular painting is painted as a miniature illumination on vellum (note the size) and was created sometime between between 1412 and 1416.

 It shows sheep being sheered - using big sheep shears - and grain being harvested using a sickle.  The sky is of course blue and the clouds are high and sparse as one often gets in mid summer.  A translation of a description in French (now updated as per Alyson's comment) reads as follows

"The labours of the month of July show the harvest and shearing of sheep. Two characters mow the wheat, each using a volant and a stick. A volant is a long, open sickle with the handle at the corner of the flat of the blade. With the help of the stick, they separate a bunch of wheat stems which they then cut with a pass of the blade. The harvesters advance by going around the outside of the parcel of land, working towards the centre. One of the harvesters has a whetstone on his belt. Two other characters, one of whom is a woman, use shears to cut the wool of sheep. With the exception of the imaginary mountains, the landscape shows, in the foreground, the Boivre River where it flows into the Clain, near the palace of the Count of Poitiers."

In the background is the Palace of Poitiers - which was rebuilt by Jean I, duc de Berry between 1384-86.

Links:

• The Limbourg Brothers - and "September" 18 Sep 2012
• "October" - Limbourg Brothers (Autumn Landscape #11) 24 Oct 2012
• March: Peasants at Work on a Feudal Estate by Limbourg brothers 27 Mar 2012

The Art of Snow and Ice

I missed Tales of Winter: The Art of Snow and Ice yesterday and will be catching up on iPlayer Click the link in the title to access it - for all those who can access iPlayer - I ask no questions as to how!;)

Winter was not always beautiful. Until Pieter Bruegel painted Hunters in the Snow, the long bitter months had never been transformed into a thing of beauty. This documentary charts how mankind's ever-changing struggle with winter has been reflected in western art throughout the ages, resulting in images that are now amongst the greatest paintings of all time. With contributions from Grayson Perry, Will Self, Don McCullin and many others, the film takes an eclectic group of people from all walks of life out into the cold to reflect on the paintings that have come to define the art of snow and ice.
BBC - Tales of Winter: The Art of Snow and Ice

[UPDATE: I've now watched it and it's excellent!  It's available on iPlayer until 1:29AM Fri, 1 Feb 2013]

Hunters in the Snow / Jagers in de sneeuw (1565) by Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder
oil on oak panel | 117 × 162 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Bruegel's painting is part of a series of six paintings to reflect different seasons of the year - of which only five survive.

This painting represents the bleak and yet beautiful winter countryside in January.  Both hunters and dogs enliven the scene despite being obvious weary and downcast by a hunt which has obviously produced little.  In the background is a scene of snow and ice and that peculiar green grey sky which only appears in the depths of winter.  The trees are skeletal and any leaves are shrivelled and dried out in the cold.  The people and animals are all dark colours and are not much more than shapes against the cold background.

It's odd how a smidgen of orange draws our eye to the side of the painting and the roaring fire outside the inn - and I always wonder why it's outside and what they are doing.  On the one hand they might be preparing food - on the other do they really need a fire burning like that to prepare food?

When we used to have this a reproduction of this painting at school I was always preoccupied with working out what all the tiny people were up to - such as the woman towing another on a sled in the bottom right hand corner.

For me Breugel's paintings always demonstrate how much more we look at countryside when it includes people who are doing things - and not just there to give a sense of scale.

"October" - Limbourg Brothers (Autumn Landscape #11)

This is another in the series of illuminated paintings in a book of prayers produced by the Limbourg Brothers (1385-1416) for John, Duc de Berry (1340-1416) the third son of King John II of France.  This particular one has familial connections for the Duc.

The book is called the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry and it's one of the finest examples of French Gothic manuscript illumination surviving to the present day.  It's belonged to various people over the years and is now housed at the Musée Condé in Chantilly, France.).

The very fine miniature paintings of landscapes that it contains represent the direction of landscape painting taken by early Netherlandish painters such as the Limbourg Brothers - who were the first to paint landscapes with accuracy.


Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry Folio 10, verso: October - Sowing the Winter Grain
by the Limbourg brothers [Public domain],via Wikimedia Commons
Date: between 1412 and 1416 and circa 1440
Medium: painting on vellum
Dimensions: Height: 22.5 cm (8.9 in). Width: 13.6 cm (5.4 in).

This is a translation from the French of a description of the scene.

The scene in the foreground represents peasant sowing. At right, a man sows on the fly. Magpies and crows pecking seeds which have been sown, near a white bag and a satchel. Behind a scarecrow-like archer and son stretched on which are hung feathers are intended to deter birds. On the left, a peasant on horseback crosses the harrow on which rests a stone that allows the teeth to penetrate deeper into the earth. It thus covers the grains which have been sown. In the background, the painter has represented the Palais du Louvre. Castle in the center, there are, besides the central tower which housed the royal treasury while the eastern side right, supervised by the Taillerie tower and the tower of the chapel, and left the southern facade with two towers twin center. The whole is surrounded by a wall punctuated by three towers and two bretèches visible here. On the shore, characters converse or walk

It's odd that the description neglects to mention the River Seine!

Interestingly the building in the background is the Louvre Palace.  There are three reasons for the  significance of this miniature painting of the Louvre in an illuminated book of this sort:

• First the idea behind the paintings of different places in the series of different miniature paintings of landscape scenes for the different months was they represented places known to the Duc de Berry.  They were castles he owned or places - like the Louvre Palace - that he had visited.  In this way the book became personal to the man himself.
• Second, the Louvre is the palace built by King Charles V and where he housed his enormous library of 1,200 volumes where books of significance - translated into French - were kept as a symbol in part of this status as King.  
• Third, King Charles V is the Duc de Berry's elder brother and it would therefore appear that the two brothers had a shared love of books.

Thus this painting may represent a visit by the Duc to his brother one October to see that Library.  At the very least, the painting is a compliment to his brother the King in his endeavours to build a library of great books in the Louvre.  (Note: I've just worked all this out reading around the net - I've no idea whether it's true but it makes sense to me!)

That said, this painting still purports to be a painting of the landscape in the middle of Paris in the fifteenth century - with the foreground being the scene on the West Bank.  However. it's unclear whether the Limbourg Brothers ever saw the Louvre Palace

Links:

• The Limbourg Brothers - and "September"
• March: Peasants at Work on a Feudal Estate by Limbourg brothers
• The Louvre, March Mist - Pissaro (Spring Landscape #1)

Painting the Thames: Jan Siberechts

This week, in honour of the River Pageant which took place on Sunday, I'm doing posts about artists who have painted views of the River Thames.

Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames c.1690 by Jan Siberechts
Oil on canvas, 82,5 x 103 cm
Tate Gallery, London

The first artist is Jan Siberechts and I chose him because he painted the Thames near Henley on Thames - which is an area less well know to those who only think of Thames in relation to London.  It's also a town which is associated with the Henley Royal Regatta which is held each year in July.

Siberechts was a Flemish landscape painter who was born in Antwerp in 1627.  In 1672, in his 40s, he emigrated to England and died in London in 1703.

His earlier landscape paintings tend to depict a small detailed aspect of a landscape.  His later paintings are typically more topographical in nature with sweeping views.

This particular riverscape painting of the Thames has been done from an elevated slope above the flood plain of the River Thames.  It purports to be a realistic painting of the scene and is one of the most important landscape paintings in the collection on Tate Britain.

• the painting appears to present a realistic portrayal of the profile of the natural landscape of this place.  However the true reality is that the view has been embellished and the perspective has been distorted.  (I did my usual Streetview search for the view - and it's not one which is at all easy to spot.  That might because of the growth of vegetation and development of buildings)
• on the right is the village of Henley on Thames (the church and bridge are still there, although the bridge has been replaced - the current five arched Henley Bridge across the river was built in 1786 -and the steep slopes in the background of the painting have disappeared!)
• the background portrays a steep slope up from the river - which exists - but not quite so close as indicated in the painting
• the foreground has cows and sheep eating the pasture of the lush grass meadows next to the river
• on the left there is a cargo boat.  There is another on the main river next to Henley.  These both  reflect the importance of the river's role in carrying goods between different centres of population and the countryside.  The boat on the left looks like it's on another river but judging by the map it seems very likely it's parked up.
• the shadow of storm clouds cover parts of the landscape while bright sunlight bathes Henley in a golden glow
• One of the unique aspects of this painting is that it's one of the few ever painted which appears to depict a convincing rainbow - although I'm not sure it's in the right place relative to the sunlight and rain.  I think it should be further to the left.  What do you think?

It's possible that the painting was commissioned by a landowner of one of the large houses built between Remenham Wood and the River, situated off White Hill above the town.  It's unlikely that any of the current houses were the one in question but it appears it may have become established as a a vantage point for the wealthy in the seventeenth century.

In contrast to the Flemish landscape painting of his homeland, England offers hills and slopes to a much greater degree and consequently, more components within a landscape to illustrate depth.  It possible explains why Flemish landscapes tend to focus on one aspect of the landscape while Flemish painters who move away to other countries start to depict larger views of the landscape.

This is a link to another painting by Siberechts - Henley-on-Thames from the Wargrave Road, Oxfordshire which you can see at the River & Rowing Museum on the banks of the Thames at Henley.

Links:

• Tate Museum - Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames
• Web Museum - Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames
• Wikipaintings - Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames 
• Wikimedia - Landscape with Rainbow, Henley-on-Thames

Winter Landscape: Hunters in the snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Hunters in the Snow is the very first painting I ever saw by Pieter Bruegel.  It was of course a reproduction and it hung on one of the walls of my primary school.

Jäger im Schnee (Winter) (Hunters in the Snow) 1565 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525 - 1569)
Oil on panel; 46 1/8 x 63 7/8 in. (117 x 162 cm)
Source: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525/30–1569) | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

I loved to look at it.

First of all, it was about a snowy landscape - which is a source of great excitement to a child living in a temperate climate where the rain rarely changed to snow

Next it had such a lot going on in the picture.  You could look at it for a long time and still keep seeing new things.  I always used to think the hunters themselves seemed a bit miserable - and that all the fun was happening out on the ice.  This from the perspective of a child whose greatest excitement if it snowed was to make an ice slide and see how far I could slide and stay standing up!

Looking at it again now, what I'm struck by is:

• How cold the picture is in terms of the colours used.  The sky has that leaden grey look associated with times of heavy snow.  The snow itself is pristine and white suggesting that not only has it snowed but also that it snows on a regular basis.
• It has a feeling of a life lived in the snow for a long time.  The rooves of the buildings have a pitch associated with areas of heavy snow.  Lots of people are skating - because lots of people can skate!
• How the posture of the hunters is very persuasive of a feeling of weariness and possibly melancholy.  These people really do look like they are trudging through heavy snow and have been for quite some time.  Also, although they are hunters, they don't seem to have been successful in batching very much.
• the composition and design of the painting is intriguing.  In one sense, it's very westernised with the main figures entering from the bottom left.  There are a number of diagonals coming in from the left which all serve to focus on the skaters in the middle of the painting.  the bird and the curve in the mountain create a loop which prevent our eyes escaping out the top of the painting.  Small figures make us want to linger and make out what they are doing. 
• the colour palette is very limited and very restrained.  However the painting employs complementary colours - the reddish brown and the blue/green/grey of the sky are opposite one another on a colour wheel.
• how competent Bruegel is at creating living beings through silhouettes.

The painting is part of the permanent collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.  The Picture Gallery was developed from the art collection created by the House of Habsburg.  It is one of the more important collections of European paintings in the world and focuses on paintings between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries.

This is what the museum has to say about it

The group of hunters returns to the low-lying village, accompanied by an exhausted pack of dogs. Only a single fox hangs on one of the spears slung over the men's shoulders. To the left preparations are afoot to singe a pig over an open fire. Delightful details such as skaters on frozen ponds have added to the picture's enormous popularity. Yet it is not the sum total of details that make the picture important, rather its overall effect. In a manner both virtuosic and consistent, Breugel evokes the impression of permanent cold.

Bruegel also painted landscape in different seasons - and I'll return to him and his paintings as I feature landscapes from the different seasons in the coming year.