Pieter Bruegel, Hunters in the Snow, 1450, Kunsthistorisches, Vienna

As most paintings have architectural structure to develop themes, govern the eye, and hold the painting together, let us begin there.  Bruegel used strong diagonals to construct the landscape: a strong line from the middle of the left side to the right corner, another, following the trees and houses down to the ponds, plunges precipitously and dizzyingly to the ponds.  Would you like to climb that hill in the snow?  By the ponds the two diagonals join and continue to the mountains.  These two lines do not allow our attention to remain with the hunters.  A series of diagonals leading to the horizon would make our eye uncomfortable in viewing the ponds and skaters, so Bruegel has painted firm horizontals across the frozen water to slow us down.  Our eye is somewhat unsettled, it bounces back and forth from the ponds to the hunters.

Beyond the hunters and village and fishponds are the mountains:  the diagonals drive us further to the edge of civilization and into the mountains.  The snow, the people walking and skating on the frozen ponds and the gray green sky make us shiver.  It’s cold winter’s day, and only the fire on the left suggests warmth any time soon. 

The hunters don’t seem to have been successful; they bend forward from the fatigue of the hunt and from trudging in the deep snow; there isn’t any game.  It will be gruel tonight.  The dogs are skinny and slumped in fatigue; some of them sniff around the trees, catching up on the day’s urinary gossip. The foreground is cold, defeating and mysterious.

The hunters may have been hunting for themselves; however, it is more likely they were hunting for the local lord.  560 years ago, when Bruegel painted this masterpiece, lords controlled access to forests and game.  These men were obliged to and the dogs owned by a rich man. 

In the middle distance, however, the houses are sturdy, two or three storeys of brick with heavily slanted roofs to slough the snow off.  The fishponds and the housing suggest a prosperous village with plenty of food for the residents and plenty of fish to sell to a nearby town or city.  Perhaps the townfolk dried fish before the ponds froze and will eat that tonight. 

The villagers on the ponds suggest winter pleasures:  children laughing and falling; teenagers flirting and throwing snow balls and showing off, adults enjoying a skate before the evening settles in.  The houses are solid and snug.  The painting suggests some ambiguity.  Not much success or hope in foreground, but in the distance, perhaps a bit of each.  The variety of life:  unsuccessful hunters, happy skaters, drunken harvesters, children playing:  these are the subjects of Bruegel’s art.  Everyone is active and alive and Bruegel loves painting such people people who could never see or buy his paintings.

My parents hung a reproduction over the mantle in Cannondale, with Seurat's Un Dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte on an adjoining wall.  They were companions of my youth.  An interesting contrast:  both outdoor, nature pictures, with plenty of human activity, but the first suggests sympathy, interest and understanding for the humans, the other, uninterested in people, treats us as part of the picture’s design.