Where can you see Pieter Bruegel the Elder in New York?

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Harvesters. Museums move and lend their works, so check before a special journey.

What is Pieter Bruegel the Elder's most famous work in New York?

The Harvesters, of 1565, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. High summer: men cut wheat with scythes while others eat and sleep under a pear tree, and beyond them the land falls away past a village and a church to a green bay with ships on it. It has been called the first modern landscape.

When and where was Pieter Bruegel the Elder born?

About 1525, at Breda or Bree, in the Low Countries. Pieter Bruegel the Elder died on 9 September 1569, at Brussels, aged about 44.

What is Pieter Bruegel the Elder known for?

Painted Hunters in the Snow and The Harvesters in the same year, 1565. About forty of his paintings survive. Father of two painters, Pieter the Younger and Jan. Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a Netherlandish painter, of the Northern Renaissance.

Painter, 1525 to 1569

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Bruegel painted peasants at work and at table with a sympathy and a breadth no one had brought to them before. To see him you must usually go to Vienna. New York has one painting, and it is enough.

Born: 1525, Breda or Bree, in the Low Countries
Died: 1569, Brussels
Movement: Northern Renaissance
In New York: 1 work in 1 museum

Where to see Pieter Bruegel the Elder in New York

Each work with the museum it hangs in. Museums move and lend their works, so check before a special journey.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art1 work

The Harvesters
1565
High summer: men cut wheat with scythes while others eat and sleep under a pear tree, and beyond them the land falls away past a village and a church to a green bay with ships on it. It has been called the first modern landscape.

The life of Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Almost nothing is certain about Bruegel's early life. He became a master in the painters' guild of Antwerp in 1551, travelled to Italy over the Alps, and came home with a feeling for mountains and distance that he kept for good. He worked in Antwerp and then Brussels, where he died in 1569.

In 1565 a merchant of Antwerp, Niclaes Jonghelinck, ordered from him a set of six panels showing the times of the year. Five survive. Three are in Vienna, Hunters in the Snow among them, one is in Prague, and the fifth, The Harvesters, has been in the Metropolitan Museum since 1919.

What to know

Painted Hunters in the Snow and The Harvesters in the same year, 1565
About forty of his paintings survive
Father of two painters, Pieter the Younger and Jan

Born: About 1525, Breda or Bree, in the Low Countries
Died: 9 September 1569, Brussels