This catalogue accompanies an exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts that will shine a spotlight on Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564 - 1637/38), an artist who was hugely successful in his lifetime but whose later reputation has been overshadowed by that of his famous father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525 - 1569). Peasants and Proverbs: Pieter Brueghel the Younger as Moralist and Entrepreneur shares recent research into the Barber's comical yet enigmatic little painting, Two Peasants Binding Firewood, setting out fresh insights and offering a new appreciation of a figure whose prodigious output and business skills firmly established and popularised the distinctive 'Brueghelian' look of Netherlandish peasant life. Born in Brussels, Pieter Brueghel the Younger was just five years old when his renowned father died prematurely. Clearly talented, by the time he was around 20 years old, Brueghel the Younger was already registered as a master in Antwerp's Guild of Saint Luke. Between 1588, the year of his marriage, and 1626, he took on nine apprentices, demonstrating that he had established a successful studio. His workshop produced an abundance of paintings, ranging from exact copies of famous compositions by his father, to pastiches and more inventive compositions that further promoted the distinctive Bruegelian 'family style', usually focused on scenes of peasant life. He was, as a consequence, later deemed a second-rate painter, capable of only producing derivative works. This exhibition and book highlight how a more sophisticated understanding is now emerging of a creative and capable artist, and a savvy entrepreneur, who exploited favourable market conditions from his base in cosmopolitan Antwerp. From this deeper understanding of his practice, his favoured subjects and the market for them, we gain a more profound and compelling insight into the society in which he operated and its preoccupations and passions. A dozen other versions of Two Peasants Binding Firewood exist and, by examining some of them alongside the Barber painting, and using the insights gleaned from recent conservation work and technical analysis, the exhibition and book will explore how Brueghel the Younger operated his studio to produce and reproduce paintings, and the extent to which the entire enterprise was motivated by trends in the contemporary art market.

Accompanying an exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts - only the second exhibition ever devoted to the artist - this noteworthy publication considers De Beer's work and career, working methods, and traces the history of De Beer's paintings in British collections. The Antwerp painter Jan de Beer (c.1475-1527/28) was highly esteemed in his lifetime and still famous a couple of generations after his death, but then fell into oblivion until the early twentieth century. Only recently have his achievements been fully recognized and documented. The artist's known oeuvre consists of forty works, mainly devotional paintings and triptychs but also a dozen drawings and a stained glass window, after a lost design. De Beer's stylish and elegant art appealed to patrons and collectors, churches abroad, and copyists. His work is typically associated with that of the Antwerp Mannerists, a prominent group of mostly anonymous painters active in the city during his lifetime. This publication will accompany an exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham (25 October 2019 to 19 January 2020) that focuses on one of its and De Beer's acknowledged masterpieces: the double-sided Joseph and the Suitors/ The Nativity. This is the only surviving fragment from what must have been a major altarpiece. It will be accompanied by a half-dozen key loans of paintings and drawings by De Beer and his workshop including all the attributed paintings in UK collections. These will provide both an instructive context for the Barber painting and for De Beer's art more generally, with the whole chronological range of his career represented. It will be only the second ever exhibition devoted to De Beer, and the first to show the broad range of his work. The fully-illustrated catalogue will feature extended entries for all the exhibited works and three essays exploring the core themes of the show, written by Robert Wenley, Head of Collections at the Barber Institute and the lead curator of the exhibition, and two leading De Beer specialists. Professor Dan Ewing (Barry University, Miami Shores, Florida) will consider De Beer's work and career; while Peter van den Brink (Director, Suermondt-Aachen Museum) will explore De Beer's working methods, in particular as revealed by the underdrawings of his pictures. Robert Wenley's essay will survey the history of De Beer's paintings in British collections.