6: Bruegel's Legacy, with Peter Paul Rubens
Peter Paul Rubens
TOP: Feasting and Dancing Peasants, c. 1630-1638
Oil on panel, w261 cm x h149 cm (102.8" x 58.7")
Louvre Museum, Paris, France
BOTTOM: A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning, c. 1636
Oil on panel, w229.2 cm x h131.2 cm (90.2" x 51.7")
National Gallery, London, England, United Kingdom
Bruegel's work was popular in his own lifetime (especially his innovative landscapes), and he actually had a bunch of close-to-distant artist relatives to leave an influence on1. His two sons, eventually known as Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder, both became painters. Pieter the Younger made copies of his father's paintings (which was commercially a great move for him, and also helped to spread his father's reputation), while Jan became an original artist in his own right who helped to bridge from the Northern Renaissance to the newer Baroque movement.
Jan also happened to collaborate frequently with another huge name in Flemish Baroque painting, Peter Paul Rubens2. Rubens was (is still) known primarily for his sensuous figure paintings and portraits, but he also greatly admired Pieter Bruegel the Elder and has several works which seem to show an influence. So above we have two: first, a bunches-of-little-people painting which ties directly back to early Bruegel works, and second, a painting Rubens made for himself a few years before he died, involving a wide landscape with a view of his own estate (called Het Steen). This second painting is seen slightly from above, and also has several figure clumps in it - a hunter and his dog, a man and woman on a horse-drawn cart, one group near the house and another down in the field. (It also has two birds swooping out of the tree to sell/anchor the scale and the distance, a common and coincidental technique but one that still reminds me a lot of this.) The perspective is more correct here than you'd find in Bruegel's work, and Rubens actually bothers to have a value scheme that approximates reality.
I disclaim again that I am no art historian. But as far as consistent style goes, that first work barely looks like a Rubens at all to me. The second seems a lot more 'honest' from this artist, and appeals a great deal more; still, it strikes me as surprisingly tentative, as if it wasn't all designed together3. This gives it a slightly fuzzy, less-focused feeling, which becomes really apparent when you compare it to Ruben's own vividly confident people-paintings. Again, this guy was a complete master, and this second one especially is no slouch of a landscape painting, but if he's trying on a Bruegel influence in paintings like these, it seems to not fit quite right. And anyway, he did become far better known for works that have no such influence at all, so admiration aside, Bruegel's influence seems to dead-end in Ruben.
And trying to look further afield than Rubens...well, there's not many people there. Jan's innovations were his own (as were his subjects; he tended to paint stuff like flowers), and almost everyone else was either directly imitating, not good at synthesizing the influence, or just not much good period. All in all, it is actually surprisingly difficult to find direct examples of Bruegel's influence. He was an undeniably (kind of shockingly) independent and original painter for his day, but that might be kind of the problem; he seems to have left an immediate mark on Flemish landscape painting, but apparently that mark was a Bruegel-shaped hole that a lot of other artists had trouble walking through. So for the most part, to look at people influenced by Bruegel is to look at people struggling with that influence.
For art historians, I imagine that might be frustrating in a way. As an artist...#goals.
NOTES:
1. Most of these relatives were successful but not tremendously good artists, so I'm going to have to ignore them.
2. He of the big-behind ladies and meaty gents.
3. Upon further reading, it may not have been? The painting was made on panels joined together, and apparently it was originally intended as about 3 small panels, growing ultimately to about 17.