The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (75 page)

Brown , Frederick
.

See
SLADE
.

 
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Brücke, Die
(The Bridge)
.

Group of German
Expressionist
artists founded in 1905 by
Kirchner
,
Schmidt-Rottluff
,
Heckel
, and Fritz Bleyl (1880–1966), who at the time were all architectural students at the Dresden Technical School. The name was chosen by Schmidt-Rottluff and indicated their faith in the art of the future, towards which their own work was to serve as a bridge. They were moved by an impulse of revolt and wanted to achieve ‘freedom of life and action against established and older forces’, but their aims remained vague. In practice they created an intense and sometimes angst-ridden version of Expressionism, influenced by van
Gogh
,
Gauguin
,
Munch
, the
Nabis
, and the
Fauves
. Other artists associated with Die Brücke included
Nolde
,
Pechstein
, and van
Dongen
. Most of the members of the group were without proper training and their handling of paint can have an almost crude vigour. Like the Fauves they were interested in
primitive
art, which they saw in the Dresden Ethnological Museum, but the inspiration they derived from it was different; forms were often harshly distorted and colours were used symbolically in a violently clashing manner. There is often harsh vigour, too, in their graphic work, and they played an important part in the revival of
woodcut
as a medium for personal expression. Strong contrasts of black and white, bold cutting, and simplified forms were used to great effect. In 1910 Die Brücke shifted its activities to Berlin where Otto Müller (1874–1930) joined the group. The members had for a time lived together as a community, but the personal rifts that had been present from the beginning became more intense and led to the dissolution of the group in 1913.

 
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(
c.
1525–69).
The greatest Netherlandish painter and draughtsman of the 16th cent. There is little documentary evidence concerning his career, but van
Mander's
laudatory biography, published in 1604, is a useful source of information, even though it misleadingly projects an image of Bruegel as above all else a comic painter. Far from being the yokel of popular tradition—‘Peasant Bruegel’—he seems to have been a man of some culture, as is indicated by his friendship with the great geographer Abraham Ortelius. He joined the Antwerp Guild in 1551, having been the pupil of Pieter
Coecke van Aelst
, whose daughter Bruegel later married. Between 1551/2 and 1554/5 he made a lengthy visit to Italy, working with
Clovio
in Rome and travelling as far south as Sicily. On his journeys through the Alps he made extremely sensitive landscape drawings; the experience of the Alps affected him much more than the example of any art he had seen in Italy. Back in Antwerp he designed a series of landscapes which were engraved and published by Hieronymous
Cock
, for whom Bruegel produced many drawings of various subjects, including parables like ‘the Big Fish eat Little Fish’. The engraving after Bruegel's drawing of this subject (published in 1557), bears the inscription ‘Hieronymus Bos Inventor’, an attempt by Cock to cash in on the continued popularity of
Bosch
, who influenced Bruegel considerably.
A drawing of Amsterdam dated 1562 probably indicates a visit there before his move to Brussels in 1563; he married there in that year. From this time until his death he concentrated on painting and produced his best-known works. His patrons included Cardinal Granvella, chief counsellor to Margaret of Parma, Philip II's regent in the Netherlands, and the wealthy banker Niclaes Jonghelinck , who in 1565 commissioned the series of
The Months
, of which five survive today. Three of these (including the celebrated
Hunters in the Snow
) are in the remarkable collection of fourteen paintings by Bruegel in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, which comprises nearly onethird of his surviving paintings; the other two are in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and the National Gallery, Prague. His style changed during the last six years of his life in Brussels; he abandoned the crowded panoramas of his earlier years, making his figures bigger and bolder, as is seen most notably in his novel treatment of proverbs, a genre that had previously been of minor account (
The Blind Leading the Blind
, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, 1568). Bruegel enjoyed a considerable reputation in his lifetime, and his pictorial and spiritual influence, through his original works and the many prints after them, is incalculable in later Flemish painting, whether landscape or
genre
. It is only in the 20th cent., however, that he has come to be recognized also as a profound religious painter and an artist whose human sympathy and understanding have hardly been excelled. Bruegel's two painter sons were infants when he died and so they had no training from him (they were reputedly taught by their grandmother—the widow of Pieter Coecke —Mayken Verhulst). Both sons spelled their surname ‘Brueghel’, retaining the letter ‘h’ that their father had dropped in about 1559.

 
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(1568–1625).
Flemish painter and draughtsman, second son of Pieter
Bruegel
the Elder. Early in his career he visited Cologne and Italy, bfore settling in Antwerp in 1597. He enjoyed a highly successful and honourable career there, becoming Dean of the Guild, working for the Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella , and making frequent visits to the Brussels court. His specialities were still lifes, especially flower paintings, and landscapes, but he worked in an entirely different spirit from his father, depicting brilliantly coloured, lush woodland scenes, often with mythological figures, in the manner of
Coninxloo
and
Bril
. His exquisite flower paintings were rated the finest of the day, and his virtuoso skill at depicting delicate textures earned him the nickname ‘Velvet’ Brueghel . Often he collaborated with other artists (notably his close friend
Rubens
), painting backgrounds, animals, or flowers for them. He had considerable influence, notably on his pupil Daniel
Seghers
, his sons
Jan II
(1601–78) and
Ambrousius
(1617–75), and his grandson Jan van
Kessel
. Further descendants and imitators carried his style into the 18th cent.

 
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