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Artist
Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Title
Parable of the Sower
Date
1557
Culture
Dutch/Flemish
Medium
Oil on wood panel
Dimensions
73.7 x 102.9 cm (29 x 40-1/2 in.)
Accession Number
1957:002
Credit Line
Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Parable of the Sower, 1557, oil on wood panel, 73.7 x 102.9 cm (29 x 40-1/2 in.), Putnam Foundation, Timken Museum of Art.
Full view of Parable of the Sower
Description
This painting of the parable of the sower from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is among the earliest signed paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, one of the geniuses of Northern European painting. A lone peasant in the left foreground scatters seeds on an upland
pasture. The seeds he has already sown have multiplied in the fields below him to the right and in the middle distance. Across the river, a small crowd gathers to hear Jesus preaching. Brueghel left Antwerp in 1553 to study in Italy, and on his return made drawings of the Alps, which influenced the detail and aerial perspective of the landscape in this painting.

Related Information / Media

Provenance

Fernand Stuyck del Bruyère, Antwerp, 1924 [1]; Acquired by the Putnam Foundation, 1957
Provenance Notes:
  • [1] The picture first came to notice when it was bought by Fernand Stuyck at public auction at the Fievez Gallery, Brussels, in 1924. It was then catalogued simply as Flemish school, seventeenth century. In December of that year, when it was cleaned by the elder Mr. Buesco, conservator for the Belgian royal family, the signature and date were revealed. The painting came to the United States just before World War II. It was then shown in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Exhibited

Brussels, Exposition universelle et internationale, 1935, Cinq Siècles d’ art, 1:63, no. 133, and 2: pl. LVIII, as The Estuary; Paris, Musée del l’ Orangerie, 1935, De van Eyck à Brueghel, p. 15, no. 14, pl. pl. XLI; Worcester Art Museum, and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1939, Exhibition of Flemish Painting, cat. intro. By Leo van Puyvelde, p. 54, no. 94, ill.; San Francisco, Gold Gate International Exposition, 1939, Master Works of
Five Centuries, no. 3, ill; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, extended loan, 1958-65.

Literature

Max J. Friedlander, "Neues von Pieter Brueghel," Pantheon 7 (February 1931): 58; Edouard Michel, "A propos de Brueghel le Vieux," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 7 (February 1932): 126-32, ill.; Charles de Tolnay, Pierre Brueghel l'Ancien Brussels, 1935), pp. 75-76, fig. 14.3; Leo van Puyvelde, Pierre Brueghel l'Ancien à l’exposition d'art ancien de Bruxelles (Brussels, 1935); Gustav Glück, Pieter Brueghel, the Elder (London, 1936), p. 24, no. 6, ill.; Max J . Friedländer; "Pieter Brueghel," in Die Altniederländische Malerei, 14 vols. (Berlin and Leiden, 1924-37), 14:11, pl. IV; Gotthard Jedlicka, Pieter Brueghel: Der Maler in seiner Zeit (Erlenbach, 1938), p. 513, pl. 3; Leo Bruhns, Das Brueghel Buch
(Vienna,1941), p. 14, no. 6, ill.; Gustav Glück, Das grosse Brueghel-Werk (Vienna, 1951), p. 40, ill.; Robert Genaille, Brueghel l'Ancien (Paris, 1953), p. 26; Charles de Tolnay, "An Unknown Early Panel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder," Burlington Magazine 97 (August 1955): 239; F. Grossman, Brueghel: The Paintings (London, 1955), pp. 18, 190, pl. 5; Robert L. Delevoy, Brueghel (Geneva, 1959), p. 30, ill.; Valentin Denis,
All the Paintings of Pieter Brueghel (London, 1961), pp.13, 26, 27, pl. 2; Leo van Puyvelde, La Peinture flamande au siècle de Bosch et Brueghel (Paris, 1962), p. 81; Piero Bianconi, The Complete Paintings of Brueghel (New York, 1967), pp. 88, 90, no. 10, ill.; Bob Claessens and Jeanne Rousseau, Our·Brueghel (Antwerp, 1969), p. 33, pl. 5; Marguerite Kay, Brueghel (London, 1969), pp. 16, 32, pl. 3; Roger H. Marijnissen, Brueghel (Brussels, 1969), pp. 38, 86-87, no. 5, ill.; Agnes Mongan and Elizabeth Mongan, European Paintings in the Timken Art
Gallery (San Diego, 1969), pp. 54-55, 116-17, no. 18, ill.; Wolfgang Stechow, Pieter Brueghel the Elder (New York, [1969]), pp. 19, 21, 52, pl. 1; R[oger] Marijnissen and M. Seidel, Brueghel (New York, 1971), p. 38, no. 5, pls. on pp. 86-87; Keith Roberts, Brueghel (London, 1971), p. 6; F[ritz] Grossman, Pieter Brueghel: Complete Edition of the Paintings, 3d ed. (London, 2973), p. 290, pl. 22; Walter S. Gibson, Brueghel (New York, 2977), pp. 38,42-43, 256, fig. 19; Tiziana Frati, Brueghel: Every Painting (New York, 1979), pp. 4-13, fig. 3; Alexander Wied, Brueghel (London, 1979), pp. 40-41, 85, 90, 185, no.+ ills.; Martin E. Petersen, "Three Centuries of European Paintings,1300-16oo," Apollo 115 (June 1982): 445, fig. 8; Timken Art Gallery: European and American Works of Art in the Putnam Foundation Collection (San Diego, 1983), pp. 20-21, 115-16, no. 3, ill.; Walter S. Gibson, "Mirror of the Earth": The World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting (Princeton, 1989), p. 66.

Note

This record has been reviewed by Timken Museum of Art staff and may be incomplete or contain errors. Our records are constantly revised. Inquiries about provenance are advised to contact the Director of Curatorial Affairs: curator@timkenmuseum.org.