Artwork: Robbing the Bird’s Nest (whole and two details)

Artist: Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1565-1638)

Medium: Oil on panel

Created: Unknown

Dimensions: 17.3 x 18 cm

Location: The Holburne Museum, Bath Spa, UK

Photography credit by 1️⃣ZebraPhotography

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“The Bruegel (later Brueghel) family of Antwerp produced four generations of artists. The dynasty’s founder was Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose much-loved scenes of peasant life, religious subjects and intricate landscapes were made for the bourgeois and courtly collectors of Brussels and Antwerp. His humours depictions of country folk and their foibles carry allegorical and moralising messages, sometimes illustrating traditional proverbs. Bruegel’s son Pieter Brueghel the Younger always remained in the shadow of his father; he run a busy studio that mostly produced copies or imitation of his celebrated compositions.

This little oval painting is based on a lager, rectangular original painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1568 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. A stout peasant, a sack by his feet and a stick in his hand, points upwards to the nearest tree, where a man clings to a brunch as his hat falls off. He is a thief intent on robbing a bird’s nest. In the background, women go about their business among fish ponds and thatched houses, while a minute pair of white swans floats on the water. This minor incident is made telling because every detail has been depicted with such loving realism. It probably illustrates the proverb’He who knows where the nest is has the knowledge. He who robs it has the nest.’ It contrasts the restraint of one man, set firmly on the ground, with the precarious position of the thief.” Source from a book of The Holburne Museum,now in our collection after visited the museum)

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