Traditional Art. Painted beehives

Number by catalogue:  Yvert: 438   Scott: 565  

Perforation type: 14x14

Subject:

218tolars. Painting* "The Miller and his wife", work bee

Additional:

*Beehive panel paintings as a unique form of rural arts in the Slovene Alpine area achieved their greatest flowering in the second half of the 19th century. Apiaries with painted panels were not only open-air galleries, but also outdoor classrooms displaying paintings with many different motifs. The early paintings mostly depicted the scenes from the Old and New Testaments, the saints, and other religious motifs. During the golden age of beehive painting between the 1820s and 1880s secular motifs – both imaginary and factual ones – were added. Panel paintings also depict historical and war motifs, scenes from village life and fetes, animals, various professions and the work associated with them, etc. Paintings incorporating imaginary scenes include images of Gypsies, Turks and exotic animals, scenes satirizing tailors, shoemakers and hunters and those mocking female weaknesses.

The beehive panel on the stamp was painted in 1869. It is displayed in the Carinthian Regional Museum at Slovenj Gradec as a part of the Čarf collection. It shows a miller and his wife. Millers had a general reputation of being dishonest.

The miller depicted on the panel greets a man and invites him to his mill, while miller's wife thumbs her nose at him behind his back, ridiculing human stupidity.