Essays in Idleness

Not enough attention has been given to Pieter Bruegel (the elder, of Antwerp, mostly). This is a situation I have been able to remedy, at least for myself, over the last week or so. I have the old Phaidon collections, of the drawings and of the paintings respectively, and being an idle person I have been flipping through the pages, while sometimes pausing, to stare.

Bruegel’s landscape drawings, especially one which shows a sketcher, very small, at work within the mountains, is an autobiographical indication that he will abscond when the sketch is finished. He is “the master of moving on.” Bruegel never did portraits, consciously — depicting only beggars, peasants, and connoisseurs as they happen across his way. He “graduated” into colour painting and more visionary and apocalyptic compositions, just as he was retiring from the trade of producing pretty prints for the tourists. And, having not participated in the lucrative market for religious genre paintings — it was a quick way to make a Guilder in bourgeois Netherlandish times — he instead wandered off, quite by himself. He persists in being more draughtsman than composer, even as a painter. He is no surrealist; he has no plan. He paints just what he sees.

His landscapes, like his people, are so very much alive. They are moving, and seem never awkward.

The Fight Between Carnival & Lent is the Plate from which I extracted the detail, mentioned in my headline. It is a scene mixed rife with gaiety and tragedy, outdoors and urban, in the shadow of a church. Bruegel has humour, but it is amazing what he is without. He lacks mockery.