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The latter's work is strongly influenced by Breughel. Through an extraordinary paradox, Belgian Art, which only represented scenes of merriment during the darkest days of the Spanish occupation, gave far more importance to scenes of misery during the modern time of great public prosperity, so revolting did it seem that such prosperity should not be shared by all.
Other fine pictures are a Spanish prince by Lucas van Leyden; an old Dutch scholar by an artist unknown, No. 784; and a young husband and wife by Joost van Cleef the Elder, and a Breughel the Elder, like an old Crome a beauty No. 928.
These forests belong to Les Aigues, and to the Marquis de Ronquerolles and the Comte de Soulanges, whose castles and parks and villages, seen in the distance from these heights, give the scene a strong resemblance to the imaginary landscapes of Velvet Breughel.
Breughel and Teniers made their grotesque "Cat Concerts" famous, but one can scarcely see why, since the drawing is poor and there is no real insight into cat character evident. The sleeping cat, in Breughel's "Paradise Lost" in the Louvre, is better, being well drawn, but so small as to leave no chance for expression.
A Bach suite, just like a Breughel landscape, has been, as it were, worked out under the microscope, and nowadays it is easier to find a hundred philosophers of history who are capable of constructing history as a "work of art" exceedingly well on the whole than one individual chronicler who would lose himself, with the dead leaf-counting diligence of bygone centuries, in endless detail-work.
Though it is impossible to divide the two groups of artists among the two political and religious tendencies in conflict, the works of Breughel and Jordaens may be considered as a necessary counterpart to those of Frans Floris and Rubens if we wish to form a complete idea of the civilization of the period.
Old Breughel is best studied at Vienna, where there are good examples of his various subjects, notably a Crucifixion and The Tower of Babel both dated 1563 and secular scenes like A Peasant Wedding and a Fight between Carnival and Lent, which are full of clever and droll invention. His elder son, Pieter, was called Hell Breughel, from his choice of subject.
When we turn to the genre painting of the Flemish and Dutch artists we find that they represented scenes in the lives of coarse, drunken boors and vulgar women works which brought these artists enduring fame by reason of their wonderful technique; but we can mention one woman only, Anna Breughel, who seriously attempted the practice of this art.
Another almost as grotesque was a Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Breughel the Elder a snow-scene in the wide street of a red brick, high-gabled village soldiers, parents, children, all in the stiff, ungraceful Flemish dress of the sixteenth century, the poor little children, in square trousers and pinafores, clinging to their mothers' narrow skirts.
Names of Satanic painters, from Hell-fire Breughel to Arnold Böcklin, from Felicien Rops to Franz Stuck, passed through the halls of Irving Baldur's memory. The clangour of the feast was become maddening. He heard the Venus ballet music from Tannhäuser entwined with the acridities of aloes, sandal, and honeysuckle.
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