In this short essay I am looking at a particular painting by Bruegel - you can see the entire painting on the Met Museum website (link below) - the photo above is a detail from the painting, as featured in Bruegel in Detail by Manfred Sellink.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435809
Bruegel’s Summer
Who is the woman in blue and where did she get that hat?
It is a stormy summer day in August, the rain is relentless, and I am missing summer. Somehow it is August already and the garden is far too green; where is the desert lawn of yesteryear?
I am in the mood to stare at paintings, groups of figures and details. Naturally, Bruegel comes to mind quickly. His attention to detail and little shocks, epiphanies of humour and melancholy, never fail to inspire and intrigue. His paintings are human and portray people as real beings with complex lives, flaws and passions…. I grab the few books that I have and find myself looking for summer paintings, particularly, because I know he did more than the ubiquitous winter scenes.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30-1569) is a painter I associate in my mind with winter. I think of skaters, villages with dwellings dwarfed by snow, people bundled up in their cold weather layers going about their working days. What I like about Bruegel’s paintings is their depiction of working folk, the everyday. I feel reluctant to call these people ‘peasants’. A question I ask myself, often, is to what extent is Bruegel depicting his actually observed world? Bruegel’s depictions of beggars, hellish scenes and parables are storytelling paintings and drawings, offering a myriad of warnings and vantage points.
Bruegel’s painting The Harvester’s, painted in 1565, depicts people at work but also basking in the light and breaking bread together. Here is a summer’s day full of light and playfulness, a warmth and joy of outdoors. Peering at this painting and its details, one can be transported to a never-ending fine day, where the work and bread are equally plentiful. There’s a sense of community in the huddle of people sat eating their simple meal, with pears literally gathered a moment ago from nearby trees. It is interesting to note that this painting was commissioned by a wealthy merchant banker from the city of Antwerp. So, one might consider, to what extent is Bruegel playing up to an ideal of pastoral life? Or does it have some deeper meaning to do with God’s promise that the meek shall inherit the earth?
Looking again at the woman in blue. It’s not just her hat that intrigues me, though it does look like something a China-man on a vase might wear. It looks to be woven but how does it stay on? It looks like one gust of wind might blow it across the fields and far away into the distant detail. Her hair is tucked into a white head wrapping, as is the style of that period, so we cannot see the colour of her hair but I imagine she is middle aged and greying. She has the ruddy complexion of someone who has spent years outdoors in all weathers. Her blue jacket makes her a focal point in a painting that allows many of the other folk to blend more easily into the landscape. Where did that blue come from? Woad or indigo plants? It may be a fine summer’s day but no one is immodestly dressed. You sewed yourself inside one smock and then, come winter, sewed yourself inside another.
The male figure stretched out in ungainly fashion beneath the tree lends a comical detail, in what is otherwise a very cooperative scene. Perhaps he’s had too much sun, or beer, wine, or work, or all that life has given. Or possibly he depicts the odd man out, the one that will not make hay whilst the sun shines only to be later depicted as a starving beggar in winter.
Looking beyond the picnickers, into the main scene of the harvest activity, the swoop of the wheat field seems to be so solid and unyielding, I can’t help but think of a skateboarding park. How do they get a scythe threw something that appears so golden and dense? The small teepees of wheat have a homely appeal, as if children might crawl between them, but there are no small children in the field. This is a working space, though I wonder if women with babes strapped to their breast also worked the harvest. There is a dynamic pathway through the wheat, leading the eye beyond.
Bruegel does not just depict the wheat fields and nearby space but, as in many of his paintings, we get to see a wide scope of landscape with contrasting greens, more distant wheat fields, a port and ships. I am fascinated by the huddle of cottages with their tall sloping roofs and proximity to trees. Why are they so close to the woods? For shelter and firewood? It seems that at first glance the trees are growing from the cottages themselves. I love this idea, of course. There are people at play in nearby fields. The same folk that in winter scenes would be painted as skaters, hunters, are now playing sport and paddling in a pond.
I still don’t know who the woman in blue is. When I first encountered her I thought perhaps she was carving a wooden bowl but when I showed my daughter the detail of this she suggested, I think correctly, that the woman is carving slices of meat from a cured joint. The other women in this painting have a more uniform appearance with white aprons and caps, suggesting they are maidens of the harvest, whilst our lady in blue seems to have some other status, not simply of age but within her clan of people.
My daughter now tells me she thinks the woman is carving a bowl after all. What do you think?
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I enjoyed seeing Bruegel’s work through your eyes. I have not studied his paintings so you opened my eyes to many details I would otherwise have missed.
In reference to the woman with the bowl, it seems that the others around her are consuming something from their bowls. Might she be the one dispensing their portions from her larger vessel?
Another wonderful and engaging post, Cathy— thank you!
It’s a very strange angle to be carving something, she doesn’t seem to need to be putting much effort in. Could it be half a round of cheese?