Biography

Flemish painter, son of Pieter Brueghel the Younger. He was accepted as a free master in the Antwerp Painters' Guild in 1608. He began his training in his father's workshop, where he remained, and which he ran from 1630 onwards.

In spite of the 40 years that had passed between the death of the illustrious Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his grandson Pieter Brueghel III's becoming a master, the demand for all things Brueghelian continued to increase: since the originals remained inaccessible and jealously guarded within the collections of princes and/or nobility, admirers had no choice but to obtain copies or, more correctly, variations from the workshop of his descendants.

It is thanks to this abundant production that evidence survives of certain original compositions by Pieter Bruegel the Elder which had been lost, as well as shedding light on the connections between the workshops of Pieter Brueghel II and III and the work of other masters such as David Vinckboons, Jacob Savery, Marten van Cleve and Jacob Grimmer.

Even if original compositions by Pieter Brueghel III are rare, and his work is sometimes confused with that of his father, it nonetheless bears its own characteristic imprint: inclined towards a nearly abstract and distinctly modern distillation of the palette, Brueghel III intentionally accentuates the intensity of the hues. By the same token, in the sometimes heightened expressiveness of the faces, he succeeds in adding a personal note to the most satirical side of the Brueghelian sensibility.