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The Hare Hunters
Pieter Bruegel, the elder (Flemish, 1525/30-1569)
1566
- Medium
- Etching in black on ivory laid paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 21.5 × 29.2 cm (8 1/2 × 11 1/2 in.); Sheet: 24.6 × 31.8 cm (9 11/16 × 12 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This etching might represent two related proverbs popularized by the philosopher/writer Erasmus in the mid-1500s: “He who chases two hares catches neither” and “A hare yourself, you hunt for prey.” In compositional terms, the proverb served Pieter Bruegel the Elder as more of a pretext for the sweeping landscape scene that occupies most of the printed field.
Bruegel’s inf luence on the early development of the landscape genre cannot be overestimated. He created important landscape drawings, but his impact spread even more forcefully through the medium of printmaking. This is the only etching he is believed to have executed himself.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
