.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
This Birdtrap is a finely preserved example of what is arguably the Brueghel dynasty’s most iconic invention and one of the most enduringly popular compositions of the Netherlandish landscape tradition. Although no fewer than 127 versions have survived from the family’s studio and followers, only 45 are now believed to be autograph works by Pieter Brueghel the Younger himself, with the remainder being largely workshop copies of varying degrees of quality (K. Ertz, op. cit., pp. 605-30, nos. E682 to A805a).
The original prototype for the composition appears to be the panel, signed and dated 1565, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts in Brussels. This work has been almost universally accepted as the prime, though authors like Gustav Glück have doubted its attribution, with another version dated 1564, formerly in the A. Hassid collection in London, complicating the debate. Whatever the prototype, the composition derives ultimately from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s celebrated masterpiece The Hunters in the Snow of 1565 (fig. 1; Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum) in which the basic formal components were established in subtly modulated tones of white, blue, brown and black. As was the case for many of his compositions and designs, Brueghel the Younger adapted and reused various themes and subjects that had originated in his father’s workshop. In the case of The Birdtrap, it is perhaps his work, and that of his studio, that truly established the composition as one of perennial popularity from the seventeenth century onwards.
The Birdtrap is one of the earliest and certainly most significant winter landscapes of the Netherlandish tradition. In contrast to The Hunters in the Snow, where the figures trudge through a stark, still countryside, the present work shows villagers enjoying the pleasures of winter in a more convivial atmosphere, offering a vivid evocation of the various diversions of wintertime. In the middle ground, blanketed by snow, a group of villagers are shown skating, curling and playing games of hockey and skittles on a frozen river. The cold winter air, conveyed with remarkable observation through the artist’s muted palette, is carefully interrupted by the lively red clothes of figures peppered across the ice.
Yet beneath the seemingly anecdotal, light-hearted subject lies a moral commentary on the precariousness of life: as the birds crowd around the eponymous trap at the right of the composition, they mirror the skaters on the frozen river, both unaware of the danger each poses. Elsewhere, villagers rush onto the ice without apparent consideration of its fragility, reminding the viewer of the dangers lurking beneath the innocent pleasures of the Flemish winter countryside. The ephemeral nature of life was a message commonly associated with ice and winter in the early modern Netherlands, with a print of Skating before the Saint George’s Gate, Antwerp by Hieronymous Cock, after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, underlying the poignant theme in its inscription: ‘Oh learn from this scene how we pass through the world, Slithering as we go, one foolish, the other wise, on this impermanence, far brittler than ice’ (N.M. Ortsein, Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2001, p. 176).
The original prototype for the composition appears to be the panel, signed and dated 1565, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts in Brussels. This work has been almost universally accepted as the prime, though authors like Gustav Glück have doubted its attribution, with another version dated 1564, formerly in the A. Hassid collection in London, complicating the debate. Whatever the prototype, the composition derives ultimately from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s celebrated masterpiece The Hunters in the Snow of 1565 (fig. 1; Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum) in which the basic formal components were established in subtly modulated tones of white, blue, brown and black. As was the case for many of his compositions and designs, Brueghel the Younger adapted and reused various themes and subjects that had originated in his father’s workshop. In the case of The Birdtrap, it is perhaps his work, and that of his studio, that truly established the composition as one of perennial popularity from the seventeenth century onwards.
The Birdtrap is one of the earliest and certainly most significant winter landscapes of the Netherlandish tradition. In contrast to The Hunters in the Snow, where the figures trudge through a stark, still countryside, the present work shows villagers enjoying the pleasures of winter in a more convivial atmosphere, offering a vivid evocation of the various diversions of wintertime. In the middle ground, blanketed by snow, a group of villagers are shown skating, curling and playing games of hockey and skittles on a frozen river. The cold winter air, conveyed with remarkable observation through the artist’s muted palette, is carefully interrupted by the lively red clothes of figures peppered across the ice.
Yet beneath the seemingly anecdotal, light-hearted subject lies a moral commentary on the precariousness of life: as the birds crowd around the eponymous trap at the right of the composition, they mirror the skaters on the frozen river, both unaware of the danger each poses. Elsewhere, villagers rush onto the ice without apparent consideration of its fragility, reminding the viewer of the dangers lurking beneath the innocent pleasures of the Flemish winter countryside. The ephemeral nature of life was a message commonly associated with ice and winter in the early modern Netherlands, with a print of Skating before the Saint George’s Gate, Antwerp by Hieronymous Cock, after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, underlying the poignant theme in its inscription: ‘Oh learn from this scene how we pass through the world, Slithering as we go, one foolish, the other wise, on this impermanence, far brittler than ice’ (N.M. Ortsein, Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2001, p. 176).