Gravata Painter and Connoisseur Pieter Bruegel

The Painter and The Connoisseur by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1565, is a humorous, caricatural pen and ink drawing contrasting the lofty artist with dull-witted art buyer, critic, or connoisseur. This is believed to be a rare self-portrait by Bruegel. The connoisseur babbles away, spectacles perched on his nose, his hand jammed into his purse as if reaching for money. Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder (c. 1525 - 1569) was a Dutch/Flemish painter and printmaker of the Northern Renaissance. Among the first artists to incorporate realistic details and subject matter from landscape and the life of the common people, Bruegel all but invented the Dutch art of genre painting. His many lively and witty paintings of peasants influenced many generations of artists, from Rembrandt through the Realists of the modern era.