The Hunters in the Snow

Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565 - Pieter Bruegel the Elder The Hunters in the Snow (Dutch: Jagers in de Sneeuw), also known as The Return of the Hunters, is a 1565 oil-on-wood painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Northern Renaissance work is one of a series of works, five of which still survive, that depict different times of the year. The painting is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. This scene is set in the depths of winter during December/January. It was early in the frigid winter of 1565 that Bruegel created The Hunters in the Snow, regarded as the first true winter landscape painting. 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. The painting shows a wintry scene in which three hunters are ret