Peasants dancing outside a Tavern c.1641
Oil on canvas | 135.7 x 205.4 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 406363
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This is an unusually large scene and one of the earliest in Teniers's career, dating from c. 1640. The theme comes ultimately from the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the ideas perhaps transmitted through his son, Jan Breughel I (see for example CWLF 9, 405513), who was also Teniers's father-in-law. In scale Teniers is closer to Pieter Bruegel than his son: the figures nearly as large as those in his Peasant Wedding and Peasant Dance (both Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna), the painted area somewhat larger.
This is an everyday scene in a pub yard, not a kermis, as there is not a saint's banner hanging (as in CWLF 100, 405952) just a sign painted with a crescent moon and a beer pot (seen also in CWLF 93, 407274). A man has struck up on his bag-pipes and three couples are dancing; the rest of the clientele drink, make love, talk and vomit. The comedy of the scene lies in the general level of cheerful boorishness of the peasants and the clumsiness of their dancing. The focus of the humour lies in the episode in the foreground, as a chortling rustic invites a horrified young lady (a member of the prosperous merchant family) to join in the dancing.Provenance
Lubbeling collection; Randon de Boisset, his sale Paris 1777; M. Le Bueuf, his sale Paris 1783; Henry Hope, his sale Christie's. 6 April 1811 (58); there purchased by George IV; recorded in the Rose Satin Room at Carlton House in 1819 (no 21); where it appears in Pyne's illustrated Royal Residences of 1819 (RCIN 922180 and RCIN 922181); in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace in 1841 (no 90)
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Creator(s)
(nationality)Acquirer(s)
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Medium and techniques
Oil on canvas
Measurements
135.7 x 205.4 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external)
172.0 x 242.7 x 8.5 cm (frame, external)
Category
Object type(s)
Other number(s)
Alternative title(s)
The Dance
A Festival