The Hunters in the Snow (Dutch: Jagers in de Sneeuw) (1565) — also known as The Return of the Hunters — is a celebrated oil on wood painting by Pieter Bruegel. The work is one in a series of six works, five of which still survive, that depict different times of the year. The painting is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum

Kunsthistorisches Museum

The Kunsthistorisches Museum is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on Ringstraße, it is crowned with an octagonal dome...

, located in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. This painting is an example of the Northern Renaissance movement

Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting

Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting represents the 16th century response to Italian Renaissance art in the Low Countries. These artists, who span from the Antwerp Mannerists and Hieronymus Bosch at the start of the century to the late Northern Mannerists such as Hendrik Goltzius and Joachim...

.

Description

The painting shows a wintry scene in which three hunters are returning from a hunting expedition accompanied by their dogs. By appearances, the expedition was not successful: the hunters appear to trudge wearily, and the dogs appear downtrodden and miserable. One hunter carries the "meagre corpse of a fox

Fox

Fox is a common name for many species of omnivorous mammals belonging to the Canidae family. Foxes are small to medium-sized canids , characterized by possessing a long narrow snout, and a bushy tail .Members of about 37 species are referred to as foxes, of which only 12 species actually belong to...

" illustrating the paucity of the hunt. The whole visual impression is one of a calm, cold, overcast day; the colours are muted whites and grays, the trees are bare of leaves, and woodsmoke hangs in the air.

The landscape itself is a flat-bottomed valley (a river meanders through it) with jagged peaks visible on the far side. A watermill

Watermill

A watermill is a structure that uses a water wheel or turbine to drive a mechanical process such as flour, lumber or textile production, or metal shaping .- History :...

 is seen with its wheel frozen stiff. In the distance, figures ice skate

Ice skate

Ice skates are boots with blades attached to the bottom, used to propel the bearer across a sheet of ice. They are worn as footwear in many sports, including ice hockey, bandy and figure skating. The first ice skates were made from leg bones of horse, ox or deer, and were attached to feet with...

 and curl

Curling

Curling is a sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice towards a target area. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard. Two teams, each of four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called "rocks", across the ice curling sheet towards the house, a...

 on a freezing lake; they appear as silhouettes.

Interpretation and reception

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.

Writing in the "opinion" section of Nature

Nature (journal)

Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

, art historian Martin Kemp

Martin Kemp (art historian)

Martin Kemp is Emeritus Research Professor in the History of Art at Oxford University. He has written and broadcast extensively on imagery in art and science from the Renaissance to the present day...

 points out that Old Master

Old Master

"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...

s are popular subjects for Christmas cards and states that "probably no 'secular' subject is more popular than ... Hunters in the Snow".

Hunters in the Snow is used extensively in Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director, widely regarded as one of the finest filmmakers of the 20th century....

's 1972 film Solaris

Solaris (1972 film)

Solaris is a 1972 film adaptation of the novel Solaris , directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film is a meditative psychological drama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris. The scientific mission has stalled, because the scientist crew have fallen to...

and in Lars von Trier

Lars von Trier

Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....

's 2011 film Melancholia.