This book is largely a labor of love.
The affair has been going on a long time—between the author and the works of Bruegel—but in art as in amour what matters is intensity of experience rather than mere duration.
Bruegel’s works have held for me an unfailing and unfading, yet not an unchanging, fascination. New aspects have unfolded, year by year. The latest, though not necessarily the last, has been discovery and exploration of his worlds of graphic art—the engravings made from his drawings and the original drawings themselves.
This book is an explanation in which I seek to reveal to myself and others just what makes this artist seem wonderful.
The best of Bruegel engravings are in the following pages, yet not all of them could be included. Space was limited, and the time came when each inclusion had to be balanced by a deletion. To any readers whose favorites have been excluded, I apologize, and assure them that my disappointment is probably little less than their own.
In compiling and writing this book, it was not my idea that the Bruegel “fine prints” are superior to the Bruegel paintings. On the other hand, the graphic works are not incidental to or unimportant alongside the paintings. Who would want to give up either? It is good fortune that modern methods of reproduction make it possible for those who are interested to have copies of both, for their bookshelves and walls.
Good fortune, too, has attended the labors on the project in many ways. As usual, it took the form of people. First, my wife. . . . She shares my persistent Bruegelism and Bruegelizing, even to the extent of agreeing that home wouldn’t be quite the same without reproductions of paintings such as “Return of the Herd,” “Hunters in the Snow,” and “The Corn Harvest” on our walls, where just a glance can quickly answer the inner question “Are they as good now as they were?”; and the answer remains always, “Yes, probably even better. . . .” This book is hers in ways too numerous to mention.
The many acknowledgments within will show that the volume is in itself a bound compilation of evidence of the help and good will of our long-time friends, Jake Zeitlin and Josephine Ver Brugge Zeitlin, ardent Bruegelers both. Their great collection of Bruegel engravings is surpassed only by their generosity in sharing it all—prints, books, information, encouragement. (My only problem, I confess, in arranging photographic reproduction of prints belonging to the Zeitlins has been an unmistakable internal gnawing sensation, whose nature I understood when studying Bruegel’s analysis of the Sin of Envy, reproduced here. . . .) Abundant thanks to the Zeitlins!
Good fortune also took the form of the superb exhibition of Bruegel prints and drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum in the spring of 1961 under the direction of Ebria Feinblatt, Curator of Prints and Drawings. Her kindness and cooperation helped much; so too did the splendid catalog she compiled. It is referred to repeatedly here. Every art library should have a copy, in my opinion.
My indebtedness to the writings of such scholars as Fritz Grossmann, C. G. Stridbeck, Adriaan J. Barnouw, etc., is repeatedly acknowledged in the text, and often implied even when not specifically stated.
Thanks for permission to photograph and reproduce illustrations are here given gladly to many people, including E. Gunter Troche, Director, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Gertrude D. Howe, Assistant Curator in Charge of Loans, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Eleanor A. Sayre, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Perry B. Cott, Chief Curator, and Katharine Shepard, Assistant Curator of Graphic Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Also to Lt. Colonel William Stirling of Keir, Scotland, and London, England.
Special gratitude goes also to Dr. Martin Grotjahn, superlative walker and talker, for sharing fascinating insights regarding the meanings-within-meanings in the paintings of Jerome Bosch, spiritual ancestor of so much in the Bruegel engravings. Had not this book, by plan, been devoted solely to engravings based on Bruegel originals, it would have included also several engravings based on originals by Bosch, or by Bosch-via-Bruegel, or Bruegel-based-on-Bosch. In fact, sometime in the future I hope to do for that intriguing group of engravings and for surviving Bosch drawings something comparable to this Bruegel presentation.
It is quite literally a privilege to be able to express appreciation for the reference material made available by the Library of the University of California at Los Angeles; the Los Angeles Public Library; and, most abundantly, by that peregrinating Parnassus on wheels, the rolling research center and cruising cultural asset of our community: the Bookmobile of the Los Angeles County Library, and all those who have staffed it!
My free translations of Flemish verses inscribed under engravings were kindly checked, in some cases, by Andries Deinum, and had it been possible to submit all the rest to him, they might have been more faithful, if not so free. The onus for anything misleading in the translations rests naturally on me.
Translations of many of the Latin captions to the engravings were supplied by Stanley Appelbaum of the Dover editorial staff.
My thanks go to Mr. Hayward Cirker, President of Dover Publications, for his decision to make this book physically large enough to permit reproduction of the prints in size suitable for framing as well as for more satisfactory enjoyment in bound form.
Finally, a most personal acknowledgment for help from David Klein, best skindiver among sandwich-makers, or sandwich-maker among skindivers. . . .
And now for the graphic worlds of engravings after Peter Bruegel the Elder. . . .
H.A.K.
Malibu, California, 1963