Haymaking

Peasants stride toward the viewer with rakes and scythes over their shoulders while others load a cart and a girl balances baskets of cherries and garden vegetables, all under the soft green light of early summer. One of Bruegel's series on the months of the year, this panel stands for the haymaking season of June or July, the land lush and the work unhurried. As in its companions, no religious or mythological event intrudes; the subject is simply the turning year and the people who live by it. Hunters in the Snow and The Harvesters, from the same series, are also in this collection.