A Case Study of the Theft
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The Piece
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A Farmer and Six Geese was stolen on Sunday, April 18, 2004 from Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. The piece itself is a small oil painting on a circular wood panel about 17 cm in diameter that is mounted on a hexagonal panel covered with red velvet. The entire piece has a dark brown frame, increasing its dimensions to about 30 cm by 30 cm. The painting depicts a peasant farmer holding a staff, six geese scattered around the farmer’s feet, and a peasant village in the background. A Farmer and Six Geese was painted in 1609 by the Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel the Younger. |
| A Farmer and Six Geese, Pieter Brueghel the Younger |
| Pieter the Younger was best known for being a copyist of his father’s works, which were highly sought after and very scarce after Pieter the Elder’s death. The elder of two sons, Pieter painted in a style most similar to his father, but was considered much less talented than his father and his brother Jan. The works of Pieter the Younger did not have the depth of his father’s or the refinement of his brother’s. Pieter the Younger ran a thriving atelier (studio/workshop) in Antwerp, his paintings were in popular demand and sold well since they were recognized and accepted as copies and imitations of his father’s most famous works. Pieter the Younger imitated his father’s style without having access to many of the originals; instead he based his replicas and variants from incomplete works and sketches (Orenstein, 74). Some of Pieter the Younger’s pieces which were not copies or variants, such as A Farmer and Six Geese, were inspired by the styles and themes of his father’s works. |
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| Peasant Dance, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (below) |
Portrait of Pieter
Brueghel the Younger (above) |
| Peasants were a recurring theme in many of Pieter the Elder’s paintings, and this is how he gained the nickname “Peasant Bruegel” (Sullivan, 3). Pieter, being a townsman rather than a peasant, enjoyed going out and observing how peasants ate, drank, played, frolicked, courted and engaged in other humorous acts. Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a Flemish northern renaissance painter who unlike Italian renaissance painters saw humans as small and weak, instead of Godlike (Foote, 15). The people in his works are usually peasants and middle-class folk, all of which are lumpy, clumsy in appearance, and seemingly overly rotund. They are regularly victims of their own excess and act foolishly when they are not hard at work. “It is easy to recognize in Bruegel’s 40-odd paintings and over 150 drawings a pioneer attempt at showing the common man in art, as well as a fascinating and unsurpassed portrait of conditions in northern Europe in an age when life was short, strenuous and full of pain” (Foote, 15). In many of his works when peasants are eating, drinking, playing, celebrating or entertaining themselves, the representation is that of comedy and lightheartedness, which contrasts his less frequent images of dignified and simple peasants at work. Many of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s peasant works are satirical commentaries on the follies of mankind that show sympathy toward the peasantry (Sullivan, 43). |  |
| Children's Games, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (below) |
Portrait of Pieter
Bruegel the Elder (above) |
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| While Pieter the Younger’s A Farmer and Six Geese definitely coincides with his father’s recurrent peasant theme, the painting steers clear of the more common satirical and critical nature of some of Pieter the Elder’s works and focuses on the postive portrayal of a working peasant. Instead of a grand portrayal of the excess and humorous social life of peasants, full of many characters and activities, the painting portrays a single farmer performing a single task. He stands in the center of the painting, facing his right with his body turned slightly toward the viewer, exposing his chest to the viewer but keeping his face looking towards a tree in the direction he is facing. The depiction seems rather innocent and straightforward, a farmer with some geese around his feet, a few village homes in the background, and a dog wondering around in front of the homes, but well behind the farmer. A woman is halfway through a door to one the houses in the background, a few peasants are in the distance, ascending a slight incline up to higher ground with their backs to the viewer. |
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From research I have done it appears as though A Farmer and Six Geese is probably a member of a specific and unique type of production which became a specialty of Pieter the Younger. These small, circular paintings illustrated “moralizing messages” similar to those of proverbs, and were known as "Zinnekens", of which sixty were painted (http://www.artnet.com/). Unfortunately I could find no scholarly sources which dealt with A Farmer and Six Geese directly, let alone any interpretations as to what the moral message of this painting is, so I decided to do my own interpretation. |
Nothing terribly exciting is going on within the scene depicted, but something does catch the eye almost immediately, the pose of the farmer. He is not standing straight, though the staff in his hand is completely vertical. His upper body is tilted forward, his left leg is straight and directly underneath his lower body, and his right leg is extended in front of him almost as if he is taking a step; however, his whole body is in a rather awkward position to be taking a step. His actual pose is not unlike that of some of the geese at his feet. The pose is reminiscent of a person’s attempted impersonations of a chicken. His slight forward lean, his straight-ahead stare, his arms drawn toward the center grasping the staff, and his awkward step are all rather birdlike. One might interpret the farmer’s pose as mocking or pitiful, as if the farmer’s life on earth is comparable to that of a goose on a farm. Yet the subtleness of these oddities leave the viewer wondering whether or not the artist is merely painting a recreation of peasant life and displaying the common and ideal peasant, or commenting on the pitiful, hopelessness, and possible irrelevance of peasant life in Pieter the Younger’s time, making the seemingly tame piece have a nagging sense of possible veiled meaning.
Artnet Worldwide Corporation. Artnet. 1 Dec.
2004. 3 Nov. 2004.
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Michael Whitesell
ARTH 197AH DePauw University ©2004