Artwork · 16th century · Pieter Bruegel the Elder

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The Harvesters

Pieter Bruegel the Elder1565Oil on oak119 × 162 cm

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At a glance

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Farm workers on a hot summer day, stopping their wheat harvest to eat lunch and nap in the shade of a pear tree.
Painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1565, in oil on an oak panel.
One of five surviving paintings from his series on the times of the year, where ordinary working people take center stage.

Reading the picture

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Start with the man stretched out at the foot of the tree. His white shirt is open, his legs are flung apart, and his mouth hangs open in sleep. His belt has come loose and one hand has dropped to the stubble. You can almost feel how many hours of cutting wheat came before this nap.
Now move right to the lunch party. People spoon something white out of wooden bowls, cut bread, and tip up a big jug to drink. A few round fruits sit on a white cloth. Everyone perches on sheaves in a different pose, and the scene is so lively you can almost hear the chatter.
On the left, a narrow path has been cut through the standing wheat. A man walks out along it with a jug in each hand, one red and one dark. The wheat is nearly as tall as he is, so the path looks like a little alley.
Zoom in on the green in front of the village. Tiny figures run, gather in a circle, and carry things. There are thatched cottages and a brick house nearby. The work in the fields and the life of the village go on at the same moment.
Farther still, two sailing ships float on the water near the horizon, and a pointed tower stands in the haze. Bruegel paints the near field a deep gold and the far distance a pale blue-gray, so the air seems to thin as your eye travels away.

When it was painted

In 1565 Bruegel was still fairly new to Brussels. Two years earlier he had married Mayken Coecke, the daughter of his old teacher Pieter Coecke van Aelst, and left Antwerp to set up house there. Their first son, Pieter, was born in 1564. He and his younger brother Jan would both grow up to be painters.

That year a big commission filled the studio. Niclaes Jongelinck, a rich Antwerp merchant, wanted a series of paintings for his house, each one showing a different stretch of the year. The Harvesters was late summer. An inventory of Jongelinck's possessions from 1566 lists sixteen paintings by Bruegel.

The series did not stay put for long. In 1594 the Antwerp city council bought the pictures and gave them to Archduke Ernst of Austria, the new governor of the Netherlands. The Harvesters later belonged to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, among other owners, and it finally came to the Met in 1919.

Five paintings from the series survive. Three, including Hunters in the Snow, are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and one is in Prague. A set that once hung together as a single year is now split across three cities.

Bruegel died in Brussels in 1569, only four years after finishing the series, while his sons were still small children. Look again at the men on the left, still bent over, cutting the wheat. Through more than four centuries of changing hands, their summer afternoon has never ended.

The painter

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

1525–1569

When painting this, the artist was about 40 years old

All paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder →

The Harvesters

Questions to think about

Look for itHow many people can you find working, how many eating, and how many resting?
Why?Why do you think Bruegel gave so much space to the lunch break of nameless farmhands instead of saints or kings?
What about you?When you see someone resting in the shade after hours in the heat, do you think people who work outdoors today get the breaks they need?

Same period