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Chapter 2 Landscape in the Flemish and German Schools
The Flemish School
The Bruegels, Rubens, and Teniers

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Notwithstanding the decadence of Italy, its prestige in the outside world was continually increasing. In the Netherlands more particularly, the emigration movement could not fail to find favour with artists, for their own country was disturbed at that time, and they not only hoped for an easier life there, but had the prospect of a world-famed artistic education. On leaving their Flemish plains, whose monotony is only broken by a few insignificant undulations, the sight of the magnificently picturesque countries through which they passed naturally made a great impression upon them. Amazed and charmed as they all were, there were nevertheless some among them who were so deeply attached to their own country that, after a certain time, refusing to yield to the fascination which kept many of their fellow artists in Italy, they hurried back to their native land. Among these was Bruegel, one of the most curious and characteristic figures of his time.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was born around 1530; he belonged to a peasant family, which took its name from a Brabant village near Breda. He preserved, both in his talent and in his choice of subjects, the rustic stamp to the end of his career. He must, no doubt, have given proof at an early age of his artistic inclinations, since his parents, without making any difficulty, allowed him to pursue the calling he had chosen. He was apprenticed at Antwerp to an artist who was celebrated at that time, Pieter Coecke, a man who had travelled in the East and who had studied sculpture and architecture as well as painting. Bruegel also took lessons from Jerome Cock, better known as an engraver, who had an important business selling prints.

Like his two masters, almost as soon as he was free, young Bruegel, who had been made a member of the Guild of St. Luke in 1551, was drawn into the current which had carried his fellow artists away to Italy. He went through France, and, as the inscription of one of his engravings proves, he was in Rome in 1553.

Bruegel, however, did not stay long in Italy. Both his education and his tastes induced him to return to his own country. He must have been back in Flanders in 1553. In this picture we have a crowd of people of every age and rank, frolicking on the frozen trenches of the city of Antwerp. The artist was at home again among his fellow countrymen. He was a friend of peasants and liked to live among them. He was interested in their work, was present at their holiday-makings, and painted them just as he saw them: unembellished, heavy and awkward, knowing nothing of the graces of life, with sunburnt complexions and rough, unshapely hands. Bruegel scrupulously placed his rustic figures in their own surroundings. Behind them is the country where they live, with their simple cottages and familiar horizons. We find all this in the Peasants Quarrelling, and in the subjects taken from the Bible, which he transposed into a Flemish style. There is The Massacre of the Innocents, to which the sombre sky of a snowy day gives an additional note of sadness, and the Parable of the Blind. Both of these pictures are masterpieces. The peaceful nook, which is the scene of the latter episode, is rendered by the artist with as much truth as poetry. The fresh green of the meadows, the light and depth of the silvery sky, the humble air of the village and of its little church, the low hill which shuts out the horizon, the streamlet towards which the blind people are winding their way with uncertain steps, are all well thought out and expressed. He has no regard for acknowledged conventions and his work is marked by the originality of the conception, the confidence of drawing, and the strength and delicacy of colouring.


Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Massacre of the Innocents, 1565/1567.

Oil on oak, 116 × 160 cm.

Gemäldegalerie, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna.


Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, 1563.

Oil on panel, 37.1 × 55.6 cm.

The Courtauld Gallery, London.


Bruegel was greatly respected for his character and appreciated for his talent. Owing to his industry and to the fact that his productions included all kinds of pictures, his wealth and fame increased during his own lifetime. He had two sons who also became painters and a daughter who married David Teniers. The year of the birth of his second son was the culminating point of his career. It was in this year, 1568, that he signed his picture entitled The Blind, now in the Naples Museum. The Magpie on the Gallows, which he considered one of his best works, is currently located in Darmstadt.

He did not long enjoy the happiness he had earned in so legitimate a way through his work as he died the following year, aged approximately forty-four. With him disappeared one of the most original figures of Flemish art. Just at the time when art seemed likely to be misled by the Italianising influence, Bruegel brought its best traditions into honour once more. Undoubtedly he was violent and somewhat harsh in his work, but his power stands out in strong contrast when compared with the subtleties and insipidities of most of his contemporaries. It would be futile to look to any of these for such fertility and such wealth of imagination. In his paintings he liked contrasts, even in his subjects. Deep browns and blacks are used with pure whites, and he never fears to accentuate the brilliancy of his reds, yellows and greens. But while he leaves all their fullness to these colours, he composes harmonies of strange boldness with them. Bruegel was not ultra-refined; he belonged to his own little village and did not lose his robustness in the city. With his cheerful gaiety and fun, and his constant raciness, he gives us an art, which, though perhaps at the price of some coarseness, sustained intact its power and freshness. We shall not study here the work of his elder son, Pieter II who, as his nickname of “Hell” Bruegel indicates, preferred painting fantastic and diabolical pictures. The second son, Jan, was called “Velvet” Brueghel on account of the elegance of his dress and manners. But this epithet is also justified by the soft and minute finish of his style. He was scarcely a year old when, on the death of his father, he was adopted by his grandmother. She was an artist herself, and she taught the child to paint in watercolours. After taking lessons from Pieter Goekindt, a painter not well known, he made a pilgrimage to Italy, in accordance with the fashion of his time. He stayed there from 1593 to 1596, sketching the monuments and ruins of Rome.


Velvet Brueghel (Jan Brueghel the Elder), River Landscape with Resting Hikers, 1594.

Oil on copper, 25.5 × 34.5 cm.

Private collection.


Owing to the consideration in which his father was held and to his own personal charm, Jan soon made a place for himself in Antwerp, and was immediately admitted to the Guild of St. Luke. Besides the complex compositions, which so often tempted Bruegel, he also painted landscapes, but of very unequal value. The best of them, those in which the various themes are most accurately presented, are his various Roads, Approaches to a Town, and Canals. These are all panoramic views, animated by numberless figures to which he gives lifelike attitudes and gestures. In spite of the extreme abundance of detail, he preserves a great simplicity; but on the other hand there is often a great medley and crudeness of tone. Generally, he made use of the conventional three tones so dear to Patenier. Bruegel, perhaps, carried this to a greater excess than his predecessors. No doubt the colour of some of his landscapes has changed, for we find in the foreground of several of them those sharp blues which attract and offend the eye. Nevertheless, he gave more than one useful lesson to the landscapists who came after him, teaching them how to render the foliage of the various kinds of trees and how to characterise them more satisfactorily. His productions were very much in demand during his lifetime, and owing to his work he was able to sucessfully bring up the nine children of his two marriages. He died in 1625, and Rubens undertook the role of guardian to his children. He also painted the portrait of his friend, to be enshrined in the monument erected to his memory by his family in the church of St. George.

His two sons were also artists. Jan treated, with less skill, the same subjects as his father, and Ambros was known as a flower painter. “Velvet” Brueghel may be considered the last of that dynasty of artists with whom the development of the Flemish school can be studied in a connected way. Between the marvellous commencement and the rapid decline of this school, there is another glorious name that deserves a place of honour. Rubens cannot exactly be classed as a landscapist and yet, in the scenery he painted when directly inspired by nature, he manifested all the originality of his universal ability. As Delacroix remarks, “Specialists, who have only one branch of work are often inferior to those who, taking in everything from a high standpoint, bring into the one branch remarkable grandeur although they may not have the same perfection of detail, Rubens and Titian, in their landscapes, are examples of this.”


Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565.

Oil on oak, 117 × 162 cm.

Gemäldegalerie, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna.


Although he loved nature passionately, Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) did not paint pure landscape until very late. We know what a beneficent and lasting influence the eight years spent in Italy (1600–1608), at the beginning of his career exercised over him. Although he certainly learnt much there, he did not change his methods. Before leaving Flanders he was in possession of the technique to which he would be faithful his whole life. He was quite aware of its excellence, and although he was constantly seeking to improve, he did not attempt to modify its essential principles. His technique was that of his predecessors, the best Antwerp painters, in particular that of the elder Bruegel, for whom he had a special admiration. Rubens had more delicacy and suppleness, but he also had the same virile qualities, the firm drawing and the clear, strong values. It will be readily understood that he reaped great benefit both from the study of the masterpieces and from his interaction with artists in Rome and at the Court of Mantua during his various visits to Italy.

Rubens conceived, there and then, an admiration for Titian which lasted all his life. During his stay in Italy he had no leisure for studying nature. On his return to Antwerp, he was cordially welcomed by his fellow-countrymen and by those in power, and his time was very much occupied. He fully realised the benefit to be derived from a closer study of nature, and, notebook in hand, would go out for this purpose. It was all he could do, however, to get a few rough sketches of such plants for the foreground of his pictures. When, by chance, he was able to escape from the town, he delighted to express, in a picture, the impressions he had enjoyed in the country.

Loving his work and his home, Rubens soon felt the need of having that home. He bought the house in which he lived, transformed it into a princely residence, which comprised his own studio and one for his pupils, and a rotunda built in the Italian style for his collections of every kind. These were arranged in good order and additions were constantly made to them.

In spite of his desire to remain at this base, where there was so much to attract and fascinate him, politics, which had more than once tempted him to neglect his art, now began to absorb his attention again. The Archduchess, who appreciated his intelligence and his reliability, appealed to his devotion to undertake certain delicate missions. It was only at rare intervals that he could return to his work. His prominent position caused him all kinds of inconveniences. His talent, his kindliness, the charm of his conversation, his influential friends throughout Europe, and the artistic treasures he had accumulated in his house, attracted numerous visitors and led to the disturbance of his tranquillity. His diplomatic missions obliged him to spend several years abroad. Finally he begged the Archduchess to allow him to relinquish occupations which interfered with his art and even with his health. In order to have a more settled life, he now decided to spend the best season of the year in the country.

In the landscapes that were directly inspired by nature, Rubens shows all the originality of his genius. The impressions he has depicted are very different from those we find in the landscapists of that epoch. Without concerning himself with them, Rubens endeavoured to express all that interested him personally in the country, but although he respected the simplicity of the subjects he chose, he did not attempt to copy them literally. Unconsciously he put into his pictures something of the epic sense within him, which elevated and transformed them.


Velvet Brueghel (Jan Brueghel the Elder), The Vision of Saint Hubert, 1615–1630.

Oil on wood, 63 × 100 cm.

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.


Peter Paul Rubens, Landscape with Stone Carriers, c.1620.

Oil on canvas, 86 × 126.5 cm.

The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.


Peter Paul Rubens, Landscape with a Rainbow, 1636–1638.

Oil on canvas, 86 × 130 cm.

The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.


Each of his pictures, interesting as it was in itself, had its own special meaning in a series which included all the most characteristic aspects of the landscape. These pictures were varied by the points of view, the differences in the sky, the hour of day, and by the succession of work which the change of season demanded.

Above everything, Rubens loved to paint the summer, with its fertility and magnificence. He has given us a large number of landscapes, the subjects being taken from the country around Steen. These pictures, therefore, must date from towards the end of his career.

The Return from the Fields is very interesting. Under a sky tinged by the gleams of the setting sun, the vast Flemish plain, with its woods and meadows, its villages half hidden by greenery, stretches out to the bluish horizon. In the distance is the town of Malines, dominated by the Saint-Rombaut steeple. The sun, which is just disappearing, lights up the whole country with its last rays. In the midst of the increased activity which, at this moment, seems to animate the scene, the peace of approaching night is suggested, and one feels that in the cool air the vague fragrance of the freshly-cut hay fills the atmosphere. Very different, but perhaps still more natural, is the impression of that Landscape with a Rainbow. Here, too, summer, with all its splendour of colouring, is depicted. The ripe, golden corn presents a strong contrast to the green of the meadows, whose brilliancy is more vivid after the rain, while the treetops, lit up by the sun, stand out against the sombre clouds on which is seen the huge curve of the rainbow.

The importance which Rubens gives to the changing aspects of the sky is quite an innovation. No other artist had thought of representing the great combats of the clouds and their perpetual transformations. It was not only the falling of the snow or the appearance of the rainbow after the storm that he painted. All the various phenomena of light and all the atmospheric disturbances attracted his attention and tempted his brush. In his picture of the Cart Stuck in the Mire, also referred to as The Storm, we see the owners of the cart endeavouring to extricate it from the furrows in which it is wedged. They are evidently in a hurry, as night is approaching and the road is rough. The mysterious twilight, so dear to contemporary landscapists, had never inspired artists before Rubens, and he expresses its poetical vagueness with exquisite charm. His predecessors had rarely been tempted to portray the solemn calm of the starry night.

In each of these landscapes, the figures or animals, in lifelike attitudes, always seem to be in just the right place. They characterise the picture or relieve its tone by an effective touch, such as the white of a horse, or the bright blue or red of a skirt. In one picture two men are sawing a tree, a fowler has spread his nets, and two ladies and a horseman half hidden in the shrubs are waiting to see the birds captured.


Peter Paul Rubens, Return of the Peasants from the Fields, 1635.

Oil on wood, 121 × 194 cm.

Palazzo Pitti, Florence.


Profitable though absolute freedom and mental repose would have been to Rubens during the last years of his life, he was not able to spend as much time in his home at Steen as he would have liked. Certain unavoidable obligations compelled him to return to Antwerp. He had more orders than he could execute from Philip IV, and died in the midst of completing them. At the end of the summer of 1639 he left Steen, where he had been to recuperate, and this was the last he saw of his home, for on the 30th of May, 1640, he died after great suffering. The very name of Rubens suffices, in our days, to express the loss to art occasioned by his death.

Even if with Rubens, the star of the Flemish school, disappeared, David Teniers was greatly influenced by him. He, too, but with less breadth of treatment, attempted, various styles. Without idealising his subject or drawing much on his imagination, he simply painted what he saw. He frequently treats the unimportant sides of great subjects, but his intelligence interests us with the humblest themes. His lively and amusing composition is somewhat summary perhaps, and his thin and extremely transparent colour sometimes lacks strength. On a thinly-painted surface he gives the illusion of careful finish by a few vigorous accents in the shadows, and highlights put in with marvellous skill. But his delicacy and firmness of touch are unique.

These qualities, which are more evident in his interiors, are also to be found in his landscapes. Sparingly coloured, with their animated skies and fluttering leaves, they are the outcome of the artist’s true sense of nature, and they give evidence of his keen observation. The facility with which he worked seems incredible. With the proceeds of his pictures he bought the picturesque Chateau of Dry Toren, and, when making little excursions in the neighbourhood with his guests, he would note the various effects that appealed to him, and, as soon as he returned to his studio, would paint pictures quickly from these sketches.

After these artists of the great epoch, who were brought up in the school of nature, the decline of the Flemish school was soon evident. This was not for lack of talent; it was simply that art was no longer the result of a direct study of nature with many of these Italianised painters, some of whom had never even seen Italy. Others were clever executants who, merely through continually copying each other, soon lost the sense of reality, and substituted for it school methods and conventional formulas.

In spite of the incontestable qualities of these artists, this school seems gradually to have lost life. It was not until after a long interval that Flemish artists, won over by the simpler and more passionate method of modern landscapists, returned once more to the study of nature, in search of the instruction that she alone can give.


David Teniers the Younger, Peasants Merrymaking, c.1650.

Oil on copper, 69 × 86 cm.

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.


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