In an uninhibited outburst, expressively conveyed in their poses and attitudes, a couple is already starting up a feverish farandole, much to the alarm of the small dog in the foreground, the symbolic guardian of the marital fidelity which is challenged here by the surfeit of food and alcohol.

On the right, a humorous note is added by the man relieving himself against the fence, while a group of figures, completed by the wife of one of the revelers, is just stepping out of the yard in order to extricate him from the festivities and bring him home.

All of these motifs (the bagpipe player, the dancers, the dog, etc.) recur in Teniers’oeuvre and also show an indirect link to the brueghelian prototypes.

Aside from the slightly satirical and moralizing spirit that inevitably imposes itself in these representations of festive excess, and in contrast to what is observed, for example, in the work of Adriaen Brouwer, it is the spirit of profound empathy for the peasant classes that connects the work of Teniers to that of his grandfather, Pieter Brueghel the Younger.

The painter’s lively and fluent brushwork clearly lends itself particularly well to the chosen theme. As always, throughout his work, it is through an unfailingly precise and balanced distribution of accents and highlights that Teniers is able to suggest those flashes of striking truth that characterize his skill in the rendering of textures and materials.

Judging from the typology of the figures, the tightly framed and compact composition and the tonal integration dominated by brown hues, this fair can be situated in the early part of the artist’s career, i.e. around 1640.

Some excellent comparison pieces, which appear, from a stylistic point of view, to have been painted slightly later but which reproduce the typology of the inn, the topoï of the fence, the bagpipe player, the dancers, the dog and the jug in the foreground, are provided by the Saint George’s Fair (panel, 36 x 74.5 cm) previously owned by the Counts of Plymouth and the Dukes of Dorset, and currently in a private collection in Belgium (cf. Margret Klinge, Exhib. cat. David Teniers the Younger, Antwerp, KSMK, 11 May-1 September 1991, pp. 100-101, n° 28) as well as by the Fair in the British royal collections (cf. Klinge, op. cit., pp. 190-191, n°63).

About DAVID TENIERS
1610 Antwerp – Brussels 1690

David Teniers is, with Adriaen Brouwer, one the greatest Flemish genre painters of the XVIIth century. His village scenes were used as models for the XVIIth and XVIIIth century tapestries. As the dean of the St. Luke’s Guild in Antwerp, he settled in Brussels in 1651 where Archduke Leopold William named him painter of the Court and Administrator of his collection.

His first genre scenes show the influence of Adriaen Brouwer and, at the start of his career, he painted landscapes in the style of Jan Brueghel and of Paul Bril. He later acquired a personal style mixing light shades and warm colours. His themes varied and he painted rustic scenes, paintings with magicians, witches, physicians and alchemists. These figures are sometimes replaced by monk eys or trained cats.

David Teniers also sought inspiration from religious, mythological or literary subjects : he painted allegories and contemporary events as well as portraits.