Pieter Brueghel the Younger's paintings of old Netherlandish proverbs are without question among his most famous works. The demand for such images illustrates the enormous popularity of the proverbs as a subject in his day. The earliest and best-known compendium of such subjects was the famous collects iana Adagiorum, a collects ion of Greek and Latin proverbs compiled by the great humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), first published in Paris in 1500 and which by the author’s death in 1536 contained over four thousand entries. The proverbs centre on mankind’s propensity for vice and sin, a rich seam of material treated with customary wry humour by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and subsequently also by his son Pieter Brueghel. The younger Brueghel disseminated his father's work, often with multiple variants of unequal quality but he also created some highly original compositions, which reveal him to be a brilliant inventor and accomplished technician, as seen here.

Created as a pair, these two small paintings on circular panels each depict a couple. They form part of a wider series of roundels of similar dimensions that focus on men and women’s pursuit of sex.¹ They share with other comparable paintings implicit erotic connotations and are to be understood as encrypted representations of diverse sexual encounters, some more overt than others.

The present pair comprises a scene with a peasant presenting his companion with a cock and a fisherman offering his catch to his partner. Both are set within miniature landscapes: in one there is a glimpse of a church beyond; in the other, rushes screen off the couple, thus providing the proverb with naturalistic, everyday settings. When first exhibited at the Galerie Robert Finck in Brussels in 1971, the pair was said to derive from the Flemish proverb ‘het blauwe schort dragen’, apparently an obsolete phrase, which translates as ‘to wear the blue apron’, a saying which is to be understood as having fun in the absence of masters, meaning people do as they please when unsupervised. Brueghel transposes this expression into two humorous interpretations of the everyday lives of rural people.

In the first scene a man, recognizable as a peasant by his simple clothes, is about to stuff a bird (variously described as a cock or an owl),² into a jug held by his companion. She is dressed for work in a linen headdress, bodice and woollen skirt, partially covered with an apron. Not only does the prominence of the blue apron suggest they are feasting behind their masters’ back (he may have stolen the cock to give it to her), the sexual innuendo is explicit. Indeed, little imagination is needed to read the duo’s desire to have intercourse. In the pendant roundel, the neat dress of the young woman indicates her more elevated social status. She too wears an apron. The presence of a basket marks her out as a servant on an errand but far from fulfilling her task, she has joined her lover on the bank of a stream. As he offers her a fish that presumably he has just caught, she pinches the fishing line between finger and thumb, affirming with this gesture her power over him. In both scenes, the figures in their brightly coloured clothes stand out against the muted tones of complementary verdant settings, one a village populated by a few inhabitants, the other a more secluded spot.

Despite the fame and popularity of these subjects, the themes seen here are among Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s rarest creations. In his catalogue Klaus Ertz denotes both roundels with an ‘E’ (‘Echt’). In The Fisherman and his companion the figures’ expressive faces; carefully rendered gestures – in particular, the woman’s fingers plucking at the fishing line; and delicate white highlights, for instance on her ruff, are indicative of its high quality. At the t.mes of the publication of his catalogue, Ertz described the Fisherman as a composition for which ‘the master's model is not yet known’. Since then, another version has come to light. Arguably less refined than the present roundel, it sold in Vienna at the Dorotheum in 2015.³

Regarding the counterpart roundel of the Peasant and his companion, Ertz lists three, or possibly four versions, all on circular panels. Of these, two were with De Jonckheere in Paris, and one was identified in 1971 in the Alfredo Hirsch collects ion in Buenos Aires.⁴ Taking into account a minor discrepancy in their recorded dimensions, the latter may be one and the same as the picture with De Jonckheere in 1993.⁵ The (probably) third example is the present work, which omits the broken tree stump (lower right), and broadly corresponds in its background features with one of the roundels with De Jonckheere. Ertz, who knew the work only from a photograph, commented that it appeared a little weaker in the elaboration of the landscape details, although this is not borne out by first-hand inspection, as is evident in the quality of handling of the figures themselves. As Ertz points out, the present work differs from the other versions: only here does the woman speak to her companion; in the others her mouth is shut; the man on the other hand has his mouth half open, presumably as he addresses her. Neither design is mentioned by Georges Marlier.⁶

The originality of these subjects, devised independently of the painter’s father, reveal Brueghel the Younger’s powers of invention. Indeed, the Fisherman represents a rare instance of this proverb in an autograph painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and taken together, the pair of roundels, which are in lovely state, are highly appealing – and rather bawdy – examples of his proverbs.

¹ Ertz 1988/2000, vol. I, pp. 216–220, nos E 153–E 181.

² Klaus Ertz identifies the bird as an owl, linking it to a Dutch saying ‘When the drink is in the man, the wisdom’s in the can’, meaning the drink has clouded the man’s head and his better judgement – represented by the owl – is going into the jar, which is equated with the woman’s sexual organs; Ertz 1988/2000, vol. I, p. 179.

³ Oil on panel, D. 19.1 cm.; 21 April 2015, lot 12, for 552,000 euros, including BP.

⁴ Ertz 1988/2000, nos E 161, E 162 and E 159 respectively.

⁵ Ertz 1988/2000, no. E 162, reproduced fig. 151. According to Ertz, the dimensions differ by only 8 millimetres.

⁶ G. Marlier, Pierre Brueghel le Jeune, J. Folie (ed.), Brussels 1969.