The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham has announced its new show Peasants and Proverbs: Pieter Brueghel the Younger as Moralist. Although Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s enduring popularity was clearly based on the copying and emulation of his father’s work, this exhibition will consider aspects of his work that speak to his autonomy as a painter. It promises to do so by setting out new interpretations for the familiar Brueghelian scene of peasants collecting firewood and by illuminating the painter’s entrepreneurial spirit.
The exhibition will run from 21 October 2022 until 22 January 2023.
Works by Brueghel the Younger have been offered frequently by Sotheby’s, the most recent example of being Peasants feasting and merrymaking in a village street, which sold in the Sotheby's London’s July 2022 Evening Sale for £1,184,500.
