The 1560s was a time of religious revolution in the Netherlands, and Bruegel (and possibly his patron) may be attempting to portray an ideal of what country life used to be or what they wish it to be. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565, Smarthistory Interpretation and reception External video
In the distance, figures ice skate, play hockey with modern style sticks and curl on a frozen lake they are rendered as silhouettes. A watermill is seen with its wheel frozen stiff. The landscape itself is a flat-bottomed valley (a river meanders through it) with jagged peaks visible on the far side. Bruegel sometimes uses these two species of birds to indicate an ill-omen as in Dutch culture magpies are associated with the Devil. The painting prominently depicts crows sitting in the denuded trees and a magpie flies in the upper centre of the scene. Of interest are the jagged mountain peaks which do not exist in Belgium or Holland. Several adults and a child prepare food at an inn with an outside fire. The overall visual impression is one of a calm, cold, overcast day the colors are muted whites and grays, the trees are bare of leaves, and wood smoke hangs in the air. In front of the hunters in the snow are the footprints of a rabbit or hare-which has escaped or been missed by the hunters.
One man carries the "meager corpse of a fox" illustrating the paucity of the hunt. By appearances the outing was not successful the hunters appear to trudge wearily, and the dogs appear downtrodden and miserable. The painting shows a wintry scene in which three hunters are returning from an expedition accompanied by their dogs. The Hunters in the Snow, and the series to which it belongs, are in the medieval and early Renaissance tradition of the Labours of the Months: depictions of various rural activities and work understood by a spectator in Breugel's time as representing the different months or times of the year.
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