Netherlandish Proverbs: The classic painting used by Fleet Foxes for their debut
When Robin Pecknold and the boys in Fleet Foxes needed a cover for their 2008 self-titled debut album, it needed to perfectly represent the music that was contained within. They needed something pastoral and folkie, much in the same way that their music was pastoral and folkie. It had to be old, with the ability to transport you to a completely different time and space. It also had to be somewhat deceiving.
Much like his music, Pecknold wanted an image that seemed light and beautiful on the surface but contained weightier and more surreal themes underneath. He eventually found the perfect counterpart for the winter-tinged album in the painting Netherlandish Proverbs, a 1559 painting by Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
The piece is a classic work from the Dutch Renaissance, featuring bright colours and the backdrop of everyday normalcy that often pervaded those paintings. But Bruegel’s literal interpretations of Dutch idioms had more chaos and bizarreness than can be seen at first glance: devils being tied to pillows, globes being defecated on, tarts sitting on top of roofs, and people conversing with bears, just to name a few.
When talking to Drowned by Sound in 2008, Pecknold explained why he chose Netherlandish Proverbs as the album’s cover. “When you first see that painting it’s very bucolic, but when you look closer there’s all this really strange stuff going on, like dudes defecating coins into the river and people on fire, people carving a live sheep, this weird dude who looks like a tree root sitting around with a dog,” Pecknold explained. “There’s all this really weird stuff going on. I liked that the first impression is that it’s just pretty, but then you realize that the scene is this weird chaos. I like that you can’t really take it for what it is, that your first impression of it is wrong.”
Pecknold echoed similar sentiments to Mojo Magazine in 2009. “We were trying to figure out what we wanted to do, and my brother had been working out some stuff, when I saw that Bruegel painting in a book my girlfriend had,” he claimed. “I liked that it had a really intriguing meaning, like there’s a story to each little scene. Which I just felt fitting for that record- dense but unified, not a collage or anything. And I liked its Where’s Waldo? quality, that it was something you could look at for a long time on a vinyl sleeve and find new little things.”
“It was very easy to get the museum in Berlin that has it to say yes,” Pecknold added. “They were super excited a band wanted to use it and put it in their newsletter. When you open it up on the inside there’s a paisley pattern traced from the back of a book that Skye (Skjelset, lead guitar)’s mum got me. We wanted two very different feelings.”
Stare into the cover while listening to ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song’ down below.
