(Dutch pronunciation:c. 1525 - 9 September 1569) was a Flemish Renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (Genre Painting). He is sometimes referred to as "Peasant Bruegel" to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty, but is also the one generally meant when the context does not make clear which "Bruegel" is being referred to. From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel. There are records that he was born in Breda, Netherlands, but it is uncertain whether the Dutch town of Breda or the Belgian town of Bree, called Breda in Latin, is meant. He was an apprentice of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, whose daughter Mayken he later married. He spent some time in France and Italy, and then went to Antwerp, where in 1551 he was accepted as a master in the painter's guild. He traveled to Italy soon after, and then returned to Antwerp before settling in Brussels permanently 10 years later. He received the nickname 'Peasant Bruegel' or 'Bruegel the Peasant' for his alleged practice of dressing up like a peasant in order to mingle at weddings and other celebrations, thereby gaining inspiration and authentic details for his genre paintings. He died in Brussels on 9 September 1569 and was buried in the Kapellekerk. He was the father of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Both became painters, but as they were very young children when their father died, it is believed neither received any training from him.   Related Paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder :. | Magpie on the Gallow | The Tower of Babel | The Tower of Babel | Christ Carrying the Cross | The Sermon of St John the Baptist |
Related Artists:
Paul Huet
French Painter, 1804-1869
Johann Caspar Schneider
Rhine valley by Johann Caspar Schneider in 1820
Ammi Phillips
(1788-1865), a self-taught New England portrait painter, is regarded as one of the most important folk artists of his era. Phillips was born in Colebrook, Connecticut, and began painting portraits as early as 1810. He worked as an itinerant painter in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York for five decades. In 1924, a group of portraits of women, shown leaning forward in three-quarter view and wearing dark dresses, were displayed in an antique show in Kent, Connecticut. The anonymous painter of these strongly colored works, which dated from the 1830s, became known as the "Kent Limner," after the locality where they had come to light. Stylistically distinct from those of the "Kent Limner," a second group of early-19th-century paintings emerged after 1940 in the area near the Connecticut?CNew York border. Attributed at the time to an unknown "Border Limner," these works, dating from the period 1812?C1818, were characterized by soft pastel hues, as seen in the portrait of Harriet Leavens, now in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University. It was not until 1968 that Ammi Phillips's identity as the painter of both groups of portraits was established. Additional works were identified, showing the artist's transition from the delicate coloration of the Border period to the bold and somber works that followed.