Existing comment:
David Teniers the Younger
The Village Holiday or Dance of the Peasants, ca 1650
David Teniers the Younger, an important painter of genre scenes representing peasants and poor people, was famous in his lifetime as the court painter to Austria's Archduke Leopold Wilhem and the founder of the Antwerp Academy, an organization that taught drawing and art theory.
Teniers probably made this picture for the archduke, who sent it to the Imperial Court in Vienna in 1651. The artist's painstaking attention to detail in the long line of carefully individualized dancers makes this one of his most important works.
As befits a painting made for a discriminating connoisseur, the peasants show none of the loutish behavior often present in paintings of the lower classes. Instead, it conforms to the idealistic perception at the time that country life was noble and poor people were joyous and carefree. |