Peasant Portrayal in Germany, Netherlands, and France: Pieter Bruegel’s Influence on the European Imagination

Peasants have been a consistent subject of Western visual art for centuries. Artists have steadfastly depicted peasants in visual art in order to comment on society and show a relatively unseen side of the world. However, the way in which people of lower classes have been depicted has changed over time. Many have an idealistic, pastoral notion of peasant life, seeing it as an escape from modern society. Many do not, instead opting to focus on the hardships of life in a lower caste. Despite the differences, artists have drawn on viewers’ visual archives—that subconscious “collection” of all the art that an individual has seen and interacted with—to create a network that connects their art to past representations of peasants. This visual archive can be traced back to the Renaissance, when a switch occurred from primarily religious art to art that documented the details of everyday life. Pieter Bruegel depicts peasants against a Flemish landscape in The Harvesters, hence presenting a question: “How should peasants be perceived in visual art?” This question has remained in the consciousness of Western art. As Bruegel invites the viewer to take in a landscape of yellow wheat and rest with the group of feasting peasants, he invites artist successors to take up the rhythm of work and rest. These selections from 19th-20th century Northern Europe show both the prevalence of Bruegel’s painting in the collective visual archive and the variance in the representation of peasants in different times and places.

The Harvesters, 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Oil on wood.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, USA.

Accession Number: 19.164

In The Harvesters, each of Bruegel’s peasants tells a different story, whether they are working, eating, or sleeping. The use of primary colors in Bruegel’s painting simplifies the composition to its most basic palette, just as, perhaps, agricultural labor is an example of life simplified to its most basic structure. Though originally part of a commissioned collection, this work stands on its own as a model for the artistic depiction of peasants. The biblical mandate to have dominion over the earth is being fulfilled here, causing the viewer to ponder the necessity and cyclicity of work, and the purpose thereof.

The Wheatfield behind Saint Paul's Hospital with a Reaper, 1889, Vincent van Gogh.

Oil on canvas.

Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany

This landscape presents a similar subject to the Bruegel painting, but in a much different style. The movement away from naturalism allows the whole landscape to dissolve into a unified expanse of gestural strokes. The goal is to evoke emotion, not to make detailed observations. Here, the peasant becomes part of the field, losing its individuality. The viewer’s gaze is not brought to rest on the laborer as in the Bruegel painting; rather, the viewer can easily overlook the peasant, comprehending him as an addition to the landscape.

Road in Etten, 1881, Vincent van Gogh

Chalk, pencil, pastel, watercolor.  Underdrawing in pen and brown ink. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, USA. Accession Number: 1975.1.774

In this drawing, the street-sweeper is as much a part of the road as the laborer is a part of the wheat field in the previous painting. Though a much more drab setting, Van Gogh still represents a very basic type of labor, one which the viewer would not take much time to notice. The viewer is not invited to meet the street-sweepers eyes, just as one might drop their eyes at the sight of an approaching peasant. One’s eyes are drawn instead to the man beyond and the houses in the background, both subtly highlighted with primary colors.

The Highway, 1907, Marianne von Werefkin.

Tempera on paper mounted on cardboard.

Museum of Modern Art, Ascona, Switzerland.

Marianne von Werefkin was a Russian artist, but she contributed much to the German Expressionist movement. In this painting, three peasant women confront the viewer in the middle of the road. In contrast to the Van Gogh painting, there is no avoiding the gaze of these women. One must confront the poverty of the peasant class head on. The high horizon line and the use of gestural line tip the women toward the viewer, giving a sense of the anxiety and weariness that comes with being a peasant.

Reapers in a Gathering Storm, 1922, Albin Egger-Lienz.

Oil on canvas.

Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria.

In Post-WWI Germany, Egger-Lienz painted peasants to give the impression of soldiers fighting in a war. These representations of peasants were sanctioned by the Nazis because they show where the German man has come from: the strong, resilient stock of the enduring peasant. [1] Still drawing from the visual archive, the figures in this painting seem to reference the laborer in the bottom-left corner of Bruegel’s The Harvesters. However, these are different from the figures who do not demand the viewer’s gaze in Van Gogh’s Expressionist works. Here, the reapers confront the viewer head-on, anxiously rushing to finish their work before the storm begins.

War Women, 1918-22, Albin Egger-Lienz.

Oil on canvas.

Museum Schloss Bruck, Lienz, Austria.

For Egger-Lienz, the meaning of peasant expands to include all those women left behind during the war. Just as he used male reapers to evoke trench warfare in the painting above, he again connects peasantry to war by showing the poverty experienced by those back home during the war. Again, these women confront the viewer head-on, compelling us to consider the hardships of war and the resilience and honor of German peasants. Egger-Lienz’s works are an example of Expressionism, evoking emotion through the distortion of shapes and the exaggeration of features.

Peasant Spreading Manure, 1854-55, Jean-Francois Millet.

Oil on canvas.

North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, USA.

In early 1820s Paris, landscape painting was becoming accepted once again as a respectable form of art. Artists like Jean-Francois Millet began studying Dutch landscape at the Louvre, where they found a new interest in depicting nature. [2] Alongside this revival of the landscape painting in France was the French Realist movement, which hoped to represent life more naturalistically than the art of Romanticism before it. The result was landscapes featuring unidealized peasants, a big change from the flashy, dramatic historical paintings that traditionally dominated the Salon.

Peasants Resting, 1882, Jules Breton.

Oil on canvas.

Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, USA.

Jules Breton’s painting is another example of French Realism, though he adds another layer to Millet’s depiction of peasants. While he still represents the peasants naturalistically, Breton’s landscapes are more idyllic than those of Millet. A contemporary of Manet and other Impressionist painters, Breton chose as his subject the immemorial peasant rather than the ever-changing modern world. Decades before Fauvism took favor, Breton saw the need for a retreat from modern life and all its worries; the viewer is invited to rest with this peasant family.

References

[1] Christian Weikop, “August Sander’s Der Bauer and the Pervasiveness of the Peasant Tradition.” In Tate Papers no.19, Tate. https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/19/august-sanders-der-           bauer-and-the-pervasiveness-of-the-peasant-tradition, accessed 1 December 2022.
        
[2] Amory, Dita. “The Barbizon School: French Painters of Nature.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org                 /toah/hd/bfpn/hd_bfpn.htm, accessed 1 December 2022.