Beekeepers by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Beekeepers by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, pen and ink drawing on paper c. 1568, depicts workers in protective clothing servicing their honey bee hives in an outdoor apiary set in a rustic village landscape. With a powerful combination of firm contours, sculptural crosshatching, and stippling of the pen, Bruegel constructs a lively and realistic composition of daily Flemish life in the Renaissance era. Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder (c. 1525 - 1569) was a Dutch/Flemish painter and printmaker of the Northern Renaissance. Among the first artists to incorporate subject matter from landscape and the life of common people, Bruegel all but invented the art of Dutch genre painting. Bruegel painted a number of religious works but is best known for his lively, allegorical paintings of peasants and witty commentary and on life, sin and virtue. His innovative compositions and carefully observed, realistic details influenced many generations of artists, from Rembrandt through the Realists of the modern era.