Year 1565 Artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder Media Oil paint | Type Oil on wood Created 1565 | |
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Dimensions 119 cm × 162 cm ( 46 ⁄8 in × 63 ⁄4 in) Location Metropolitan Museum of Art Similar Pieter Bruegel the Elder artwork, Oil paintings | ||
The harvesters
The Harvesters is an oil painting on wood completed by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1565.
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The harvesters 1565 by pieter bruegel the elder
Painting
The painting is one in a series of six works, five of which are still extant, that depict different times of the year. As in many of his paintings, the focus is on peasants and their work. Notably, some of the peasants are shown eating while others are harvesting wheat, a diachronic (relating to phenomena such as ideas, language, or culture, as they occur or change over a period of time) depiction of both the production and consumption of food. Pears can be seen on the white cloth in front of the upright sitting woman who eats bread and cheese while a figure in the tree to the far right picks pears.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art calls this painting a “watershed in the history of Western art” and the “first modern landscape”. A sense of distance is conveyed by the workers carrying sheaves of wheat through the clearing, the people bathing in the pond, the children playing and the ships far away.
In the center left of the painting, a group of villagers can be seen participating in the blood sport of cock throwing.
The painting has been at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City since 1919.
The surviving Months of the Year cycle are: