Costumed Dancers Performing in a Garden Tavern (1756): Art, History and Details

Costumed Dancers Performing in a Garden Tavern (1756) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (French, 1724–1780).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin was known for his rapidly executed, sketchy style, often used to depict performances and social scenes. The exaggerated lifted legs of the dancers seen here imply a comic, theatrical style; no social dance during the 18th century would have permitted such pronounced gestures, especially for a woman. Both dancers wear jackets with irregular hemlines decorated with round bells similar to those found on jesters’ costumes. The lanterns and swags of flowers strung from trees and the small orchestra playing on the right suggest a guinguette, or outdoor tavern with a pleasure garden.

Object facts

• Title: Costumed Dancers Performing in a Garden Tavern
• Date: 1756
• Creator attribution: Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (French, 1724–1780)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: brush and brown and gray wash, with gouache, watercolor, and traces of graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 19.8 x 31.3 cm (7 13/16 x 12 5/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1966.124

A detail from the museum

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin reused the female dancer in another drawing from 1760.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Parker, K.T. "Notes on Drawings: Gabriel de Saint-Aubin." Old Master Drawings 48 (March 1938): 58.
• The Stage: A Loan Exhibition for the Benefit of the Public Education Association. Exh. Cat. New York: Jacques Seligmann & Co., Inc., 1939.
• Tietze, Hans. European Master Drawings in the United States. New York: J.J. Augustin, 1947.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.