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Imitator of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 'Landscape: A River among Mountains', about 1600

Key facts
Full title Landscape: A River among Mountains
Artist Imitator of Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Artist dates active 1550/1; died 1569
Date made about 1600
Medium and support oil on wood
Dimensions 50.8 × 68.9 cm
Acquisition credit Bought, 1889
Inventory number NG1298
Location Not on display
Collection Main Collection
Landscape: A River among Mountains
Imitator of Pieter Bruegel the Elder
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Although at first sight a calm pastoral scene, this picture is full of activity. A river winds through a rocky landscape, seemingly flowing from the background into the foreground. The serpentine shape in the water on the left is apparently a raft of logs being floated downstream from the forests in the distant mountains

In the lower left-hand corner an artist sits sketching by a tree. This is not an early example of a painting done in the open air, however, but derived at several steps removed from the works of Pieter Bruegel. The main elements are taken from a print, itself a pastiche of Bruegel’s landscapes, published after 1590. The artist was probably an Italian working in Italy. The picture is painted on poplar, the usual material for Italian panels.

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