Video on The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

THE HARVESTERS - 1565 - by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

(c. 1525-1569)

This painting is also called The Wheat Harvest. It's one of a series of paintings of the months that Bruegel made for a client (Niclaes Jonghelinck) in 1565. One of the paintings is missing, leaving five in different museums. This painting, The Harvesters, was made to represent the months of August and September.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an interesting five-and-a-half-minute video in which they talk about this painting. In it they call The Harvesters "the first modern landscape in western art." I would like to have shown the video here, but it is only available at the site, so click here to watch it. Look just below on this post to see the other paintings in this series that have survived.

The Hunters in the Snow - December-January

The Dark Day - February-March

April-May is the missing picture


The Hay Harvest - June-July

August-September is the picture at the top of this post:
The Harvesters, also known as The Wheat Harvest

The Return of the Herd - October-November

The best biography of Pieter Bruegel the Elder that I have been able to find online.

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