The Harvesters

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1565 painting is part of a series of six works documenting the seasons of the year. Five of them survive, three in Vienna (including Hunters in the Snow, a favorite of ours), one in Prague, and The Harvesters at the Met. The paintings are a landmark in the history of Western art because they are among the first to reject the interpretation of nature in terms of religion. Instead, they present landscapes that are decidedly human, a point Bruegel emphasizes in The Harvesters by obscuring the church in the back right. The focus of the painting becomes everyday people living everyday lives in a sometimes uncooperative world. It sounds like it should be dispiriting or pedantic, but Bruegel couples his realism with beautiful tones, like the rich gold in The Harvesters, and deep, dynamic perspectives that emphasize the vast scope of the landscapes we carve out for ourselves.

Standing in front of this painting recently, we were interrupted by an elderly man, who turned and asked if we had seen it before. When we said yes, he told us that he'd been visiting The Harvesters for 45 years, ever since he was a child. He said that on school field trips he and his classmates would only be taken to a handful of paintings, but this was always one of them. Now that he's moved away, he makes a special trip to see it every time he's in the city. After we'd gone on to explore some of the other galleries, we passed back through and saw him again, standing closer this time, lost in Bruegel's world.