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Three hunters trudge home through the snow with their dogs, while below them villagers skate on frozen ponds under a green-grey sky. Painted in 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Hunters in the Snow is perhaps the most famous winter landscape ever painted.
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A series of the seasons
In 1565 the Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jonghelinck commissioned Pieter Bruegel the Elder to paint a series of pictures of the months or seasons of the year for his house. Bruegel painted six panels, of which five survive. The Hunters in the Snow represents the depth of winter, December or January. Two others from the series are also in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, The Gloomy Day and The Return of the Herd; The Harvesters is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York and The Hay Harvest in Prague.
Coming home with little to show
In the foreground, three hunters walk back towards the village through deep snow, their heads bowed, followed by a pack of thin, tired dogs. The only catch is a single fox slung over one hunter's back. Their dark silhouettes stand out against the white snow, and their tracks lead the eye down the hill. The mood is weary, cold and silent.
Detail 1
The weary hunters
The hunters plod home with their spears over their shoulders, followed by their dogs. Their poor catch, a single fox, suggests a hard winter.
The inn and the bonfire
On the left, outside an inn whose sign hangs crookedly from one hinge, a group of people tend a bonfire in the snow, perhaps to singe a pig. The sign shows a stag with a crucifix, the emblem of Saint Hubert or Saint Eustace, patron saints of hunters, a touch of irony given the hunters' poor luck.
Detail 2The bonfire at the inn
Villagers gather around a fire outside the inn, its smoke rising into the cold air. The warmth contrasts with the frozen landscape around them.
Life on the ice
In the valley below, the villagers enjoy the winter on frozen ponds: skating, playing a game like curling, spinning tops and pulling sledges. Bruegel painted these tiny figures with a few strokes each, yet every one is full of life and movement. The scene is a record of everyday pleasures in the sixteenth-century Low Countries.
Detail 3Skaters on the frozen pond
Tiny figures skate, fall and play games on the ice. Each is painted with just a few touches of the brush.
The bird in the sky
A single black bird, a magpie or crow, swoops across the sky above the valley, and others perch in the bare trees. They emphasise the stillness and silence of the winter air and lead the eye from the hunters down into the depth of the landscape.
Detail 4A bird in flight
A dark bird glides over the valley. Its outspread wings mark the vast, cold space of the sky.
The jagged mountains
In the distance rise steep, snowy peaks that do not exist anywhere in the flat Low Countries. Bruegel had crossed the Alps on his journey to Italy in the 1550s, and he combined the memory of mountains with a Flemish village. The result is a universal landscape, a world seen from above, rather than a particular place.
Detail 5Imaginary Alpine peaks
The jagged mountains on the horizon are a memory of Bruegel's journey across the Alps, set behind a Flemish village.
A world in a single picture
The composition is a masterpiece of design. The diagonal of the trees and hunters leads from the upper left down to the right, while the frozen ponds and the valley open up a vast space. The limited palette of white, green-grey, brown and black captures the light of a winter day with total conviction. The painting has inspired filmmakers, including Andrei Tarkovsky, who included it in his films Solaris and The Mirror.
Seeing The Hunters in the Snow
The panel measures about 1.17 by 1.62 metres and is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, which owns the world's largest collection of Bruegel's paintings.
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Who painted The Hunters in the Snow?
Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted it in 1565.
What series does The Hunters in the Snow belong to?
It belongs to a series of paintings of the seasons or months commissioned by the Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jonghelinck.
Are the mountains real?
No. The Alpine peaks are imaginary, inspired by Bruegel's journey across the Alps, and placed behind a Flemish village.
Where is The Hunters in the Snow?
It is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Sources and further reading
- Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, collection notes on The Hunters in the Snow
- Manfred Sellink, Bruegel: The Complete Paintings, Drawings and Prints (2007)
- Kunsthistorisches Museum, Bruegel exhibition catalogue (2018)
