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A FLEMISH PROVERB: "THE MAN WHO CUTS WOOD AND MEAT WITH THE SAME KNIFE" OR "A MAN EATING SEATED AT A BARREL WHICH HAS BEEN SET AS A TABLE"
Flemish, 1620's, Pieter Brueghel the Younger
(Text from Sotheby's Catalog, January 2008) Pieter Brueghel the Younger found inspiration in many of the same sources as his father: scenes of daily peasant life and the pastimes of vernacular Flemish society. He often propagated compositions and themes that his father had created, but also, as in the case for the present painting, he also created new images of his own. Ertz, in his monograph on the artist (see 2000 literature), lists the present painting as the prime version of this original composition by Brueghel the Younger and describes it to be of the best quality that the artist attained in the 1620's. He records six other autograph versions of which only two are signed; the present picture, and another, much weaker version, sold in New York, Christie's 19 May, 1993, lot 27.
Brueghel painted a number of these small round panels. They seem to have had resonance with a wide audience who bought these little pictures in pairs or in sets and for whom the prosaic imagery had a great appeal. Among the ninety works in this format considered autograph in Ertz's monograph, only twenty nine are signed (as in the present case) and only another seven are signed and dated.
Various interpretations have been suggested for the meaning of this splendid little painting. It clearly depicts a subject derived from a tradition Flemish proverb or saying (a source of subject matter for both Pieter Brueghel the Younger and his father alike); however, in the centuries since the painting's execution, the meaning of this proverb has become obscured and is now a matter of conjecture. Ertz, in the three exhibition catalogues (see literature), attempts to explain its significance. He suggests that the present panel does not simply represent an allegory of taste, but rather has a much more complex meaning. The representation of the old man in relation to the younger man, still in the flower of robust youth, makes a direct allusion to passage of time and of the evanescence of life. Furthermore the figure of the old man is also often used in 16th and 17th Century art as a personification of winter, again an allusion to the passing of time and of the rhythm of peasant life with the changing seasons. It also alludes to the Christian conceit of the rebirth in the nature when spring succeeds winter.
When the painting was with Johnny Van Haeften another interpretation was suggested, this one more closely related to the action taking place in the painting. The picture was then titled "The man who cuts wood and meat with the same knife," (thus causing the knife to become blunt and unable to cut either cleanly), an interpretation much more in keeping with the proverbial tradition of these types of paintings by Brueghel. It may also refer to 'keeping one's eye on the job' as both figures are distracted by something out of view with the consequent danger of one cutting his thumb.