Not attributed to Peter Bruegel the Younger but to his circle of followers, this oil on panel, stamped on the reverse with the coat-of-arms of the city of Antwerp and the maker's mark of Guilliam Gabron, is entitled The Bird Trap. The Bird Trap was also painted par Peter Bruegel the Elder and it is thought that the prototype for this composition is a painting by Pieter II's father, Pieter Bruegel I, signed and dated 1565, in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. But there were a large number of replicas of this picture and the fact is not absolutely certain. The eldest son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the young Pieter Bruegel (1564-1638) studied first under his grandmother, the miniaturist Maria Verhulst, and then in Antwerp. He painted largely in the manner of his father and even copied many of his works which were themselves copied by his followers like this picture shows.
Far from being snubed by the amateurs, this kind of painting is very much sought after by the public ; it went on auction in July 2008 at Christie's in London and was estimated for a maximum of 29,000 dollars. It eventually fetched the more impressive sum of $ 154,227.
The greatest of the Flemish sixteenth-century masters of genre was Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569). From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel.
We know little of his life except that he had been to Italy, like so many northern artists of his time, and that he lived and worked in Antwerp and Brussels, where he painted most of his pictures in the 1560s, the decade in which the stern Duke of Alva, committed persecutor of Protestants and a Protestants mass murderer, arrived in the Netherlands. He was the son of a peasant residing in the village of Brueghel. Bruegel specialized in landscapes populated by peasants. He is often credited as being the first Western painter to paint landscapes for their own sake, rather than as a backdrop for history painting. And people used to refer to him as Peasant Bruegel. He died in Brussels in September 1569. He was the father of Pieter Bruegel the Younger and Jan Bruegel the Elder.Attention to the life and manners of peasants was rare in the arts in Brueghel's time. His contemporaries preferred to paint nobilities and flatter the vanity of rich people in order to secure some commissions. Bruegel's earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of the rituals of village-life—including agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dance and games are unique windows on a vanished folk culture and a prime source of iconographic evidence about both physical and social aspects of 16th century life. This picture went for 78,000 Guineas or $ 229,320 at an auction in 1965. The picture is now on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Austria).
The greatest of the Flemish sixteenth-century masters of genre was Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569). From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel.We know little of his life except that he had been to Italy, like so many northern artists of his time, and that he lived and worked in Antwerp and Brussels, where he painted most of his pictures in the 1560s, the decade in which the stern Duke of Alva, committed persecutor of Protestants and a Protestants mass murderer, arrived in the Netherlands.He was the son of a peasant residing in the village of Breughel. Bruegel specialized in landscapes populated by peasants. He is often credited as being the first Western painter to paint landscapes for their own sake, rather than as a backdrop for history painting. And people used to refer to him as Peasant Bruegel. He died in Brussels in September 1569. He was the father of Pieter Bruegel the Younger and Jan Bruegel the Elder.This picture was bought in 1923 by a Swiss textile merchant named Hans Mettler (1) for £319, probably the deal of his life. In 1979, it went on auction for £ 400,000 ($840,000).(1) Not to be confused with Swiss-born, Ottawa-based artist Hans J. Mettler.
Not attributed to Peter Bruegel the Younger but to his circle of followers, this oil on panel, stamped on the reverse with the coat-of-arms of the city of Antwerp and the maker's mark of Guilliam Gabron, is entitled The Bird Trap. 
