Humor in Art Since the 1500s

Now that winter has set in with a vengeance, I think it is the perfect time to look at some art that can elicit a smile.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and shop (ca. 1525–1569, Flanders), Combat Between Carnival and Lent. Oil on canvas, 14 ⅜" x 25" (36.5 x 63.5 cm). Image © 2025 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (MFAB-1219)

This painting is from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s late period, when the figures in his compositions became more monumental. It is a humorous, though cynical, look at the human perception of the do's and don’ts of religious seasons. Carnival, the often raucous party before Lent, is symbolized by the meat-eating, wine-swilling people on the left. Lent, the season when Christians are meant to abstain from worldly pleasures for 40 days, is symbolized by the fish-eating, dubious piety of the nun and flagellants, among others, on the right. The two events are depicted as a battle between gluttony and self-restraint. Most of the figures in Bruegel’s satiric paintings reflect the medieval belief that physical appearance reflected the state of a person's soul. The unflattering depiction of both the "good" and "bad" behaviors of Lent reflect Bruegel’s consideration that both sides can be unreasonable in their actions during a "religious" season.

Probably born near Breda, a city in the Netherlands on the border with Belgium, Bruegel likely moved to Antwerp in the 1540s. There he apprenticed to the painter/sculptor/tapestry artist Pieter Coeck van Aelst (1502–1550). Coeck's style generally fell into the Robert Campin (d. 1444)/Jan van Eyck (1390–1441) tradition of Flemish painting. Between 1552 and 1554, Bruegel traveled to Italy via Switzerland. He is thought to have spent a good deal of time in Switzerland due to the many sketches he produced of Swiss mountains.

On his return to Antwerp around 1554/1555, Bruegel was first engaged in producing designs for engravings for the engraver/publisher Hieronymus Cock (1510–1570). His series on The Seven Deadly Sins and Big Fish Eat Little Fish were so successful that Cock soon engaged him to produce figurative subjects. He also produced designs for engravings featuring alpine scenes from his Swiss studies. For the remainder of his career, he was both a painter and printmaker.

Bruegel is famous for his "encyclopedic" works of the late 1550s such as Children's Games, Tower of Babel, and Netherlandish Proverbs. These works featured hundreds of figures engaged in typical bourgeois circumstances. After 1563, Bruegel's paintings became increasingly impacted by Italian Renaissance art with more attention to monumentality of forms than narrative. 

However monumental his figures became, Bruegel’s figures based on humble Flemish people and their activities did not jibe with Italian Renaissance ideals that dominated European art during the 1500s. After his death, his works did not have a large following outside of the painters in his family. They did, however, become the object of much admiration and revisionist art history during the mid-1800s with the Realist artists, who emphasized subjects of the rural poor.

William Hogarth (1697–1764, Britain), The Company of Undertakers, 1736. Engraving on paper, 10 9⁄16" x 25" (26.9 x 18.7 cm). Image © 2025 Cleveland Museum of Art. (CL-1101)

Like those of Francisco Goya (1746–1828), William Hogarth’s prints were meant to illuminate, with humor, tragic aspects of the human condition. In the print form, artists such as Hogarth found they could pursue the same aesthetic considerations as in painting, and reach a broader audience with their message. The period of the Enlightenment (roughly 1720s to 1800) was one of great advances in science and medicine in Western Europe. It also encouraged medicinal fakes of all stripes who defrauded their patients.

Company of Undertakers is Hogarth's design for a facetious coat-of-arms for doctors in general. The theme is death, not recuperation, as evidenced in the scroll below the shield, which reads in Latin, et plurima mortis imago (“and many are the faces of death”). The top three figures represent real charlatan “doctors,” while the figures below exemplify the medieval European belief that physical ugliness betrayed inner sin. The doctors below all sniff the tops of their canes, which at the time contained “disinfectant” (a ball of medicinal herbs). All in all, it is not a laudatory representation of the medical profession, but a caricature of a group of quacks observing the medieval idea of using medicinal herbs to ward off the plague (e.g., a “pocket full of posies”).

Hogarth was the son of Anne Gibbons and Richard Hogarth, a humble Latin teacher in London. His father was a Dutch Calvinist, the most conservative of the reformed Protestant sects. As a child, Hogarth's father went to debtor’s prison. The family's precarious life in bankruptcy in a rough part of London had a lasting impact on Hogarth's artistic development and output.

Skilled in drawing at a young age, Hogarth was apprenticed at 15 to a silverplate engraver. By 1720, he had his own business engraving books, theater tickets and programs, broadsides, and copies of famous paintings. His copying of renowned works by such artists as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and Michelangelo (1475–1564) most likely helped him develop his painting style, since he was in no position to receive professional training. He painted portraits and history scenes in his approximation of the then fashionable late-Baroque style as a means of income.

In the 1730s, Hogarth started painting works concerning morality in series of six, which he then translated into engravings to increase his profits. Hogarth's Calvinist upbringing came into play in his warnings about society's ills. The subject matter often involved the downfall of gullible young people led astray in London. His first, The Harlot's Progress, was a major success, and led to numerous other subjects in series, some of which had no painting predecessor or only the engravings remain. Hogarth despaired at the fact that his prints were more popular than his painting.

Ohara Koson (1878–1945, Japan), Monkeys Trying to Reach the Moon. Pillar picture, ink and colors on silk, image: 16" x 6 ⅝" (40.5 x 16.7 cm). Image © 2025 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (MFAB-1314)

The macaque (snow) monkey in Japan, used as the ninth zodiac symbol, is a recurring subject in Japanese art. Native to the country, the macaque is located all over Japan except for northwestern Hokkaido. Since the Heian period (ca. 794–1185 CE), the monkey was believed, variably, to have been a communicator from the afterlife, a symbol of curiosity or industriousness, or to represent the foolish aspects of human behavior. Works like Ohara Koson’s Monkeys Trying to Reach the Moon were most likely intended to appeal to the Western market for its "cuteness".

Ohara is considered by many Japanese scholars to be the foremost artist in bird-and-flower prints (kacho-e) and of the shin hanga (“new print”) movement, which emphasized the traditional hierarchy of artist, woodblock carver, and printer. Ohara was born Ohara Matao in Kanazawa. He studied with Shijo school artist Suzuki Koson (flourished 1892–1902), a painter of flora and animals. The Shijo school emphasized traditional Japanese nature painting influenced by certain elements of Western art such as perspective and nuances in shading to build form. Ohara ultimately adopted Koson as his first name, as was traditional with pupils and their mentors.

By the 1890s, Ohara was already an accomplished bird-and-flower printmaker. Around 1900, he was one of the first Japanese printmakers to send large numbers of his prints to the United States, most notably a large group to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Although he was determined to concentrate on painting in 1912, he continued producing bird-and-flower prints using the name Shoson and Hoson.

Viola Frey (1933–2004, United States), Pitcher of Mother, 1978. Ceramic and glazes, 23 ½" x 10 ½" x 12" (59.7 x 26.7 x 30.5 cm). Image courtesy of Rena Bransten Gallery, photo John Wilson White. © 2025 Artists’ Legacy Foundation, Oakland, CA / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (VF-13fyvg)

Along with her numerous sculptures of Grandmother as a tribute to the strong women in her life, Viola Frey also created several versions of the cleverly titled Pitcher of Mother. In reality not a “picture,” but rather a conglomeration of the tchotchkes that Frey collected in resale shops. A real pitcher is used for the head with a bowl on top as a hat. To top it all off, the tchotchke figure itself is holding a tchotchke. The whole is filled with the vibrant palette of glaze colors that typify all of Frey's ceramic sculptures. The surface of this piece is as enlivened by pattern and textures as it is by the colors.

Born in Lodi, California, Frey was interested in art as a child. She eventually studied painting and ceramics at California College of Arts and Design, Oakland (BFA, 1956), and then Tulane University, New Orleans (MFA, 1958). At Tulane, she studied under Mark Rothko (1903–1974), the color field Abstract Expressionist painter. The gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism was part of Frey’s painted and sculpted work throughout her career.

Deciding to focus on ceramics, Frey studied at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York, in the late 1950s. It was one of the first institutions where artists could explore all of the potential of clay rather than just the potter's wheel. Initially in the 1960s, she created assemblages and large pictorial plates. While she explored self-narrative and themes from art history, Frey concentrated more and more on issues of gender equality and gender relations.

In 1965, Frey became a professor at Cal Arts. She helped establish the Artists’ Legacy Foundation. This foundation supported artists’ heritage and provided grants to painters and sculptors. In 1970, Frey moved to Oakland and opened her studio. There she began to assemble her monumental ceramic figures—some as big as 9 feet (3.75 meters)—from many separate pieces. Frey’s sculptures represent men in suits and ties and women old-fashioned, brightly colored dresses. An avid collector of ceramic figurines from flea markets and junk shops, she used them as models for some of her large figures and sometimes included them in the works themselves. Frey's work plays an important part in the development of large-scale clay sculpture that became mainstream in the 1970s with artists like David Gilhooly (1943–2013) and Robert Arneson (1930–1992), who were both part of the California Pop genre.