Village Festival (c. 1646–50): Art, History and Details

Village Festival (c. 1646–50) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is David Teniers (Flemish, 1610–1690).

The work and its context

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

Depictions of peasant festivals, such as weddings, harvests, and village holidays became an extremely popular subject for Flemish artists during the 1600s. In his paintings of these festive occasions David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690), portrayed peasants dancing and playing music, focusing on the cheerful elements of peasant life. His images often feature close-knit family groups taking part in the celebration. Contrary to his predecessors, who often depicted broken and disorderly still life objects in their paintings, Teniers emphasized household objects in brass, ceramic, and glass in a perfect state to demonstrate the growing prosperity of the peasants.

Object facts

• Title: Village Festival
• Date: c. 1646–50
• Creator attribution: David Teniers (Flemish, 1610–1690)
• Culture: Flanders
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 57 x 91 x 9 cm (22 7/16 x 35 13/16 x 3 9/16 in.); Unframed: 37.7 x 71.3 cm (14 13/16 x 28 1/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Flemish
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1977.122

A detail from the museum

Surviving drawings show that Teniers sketched many peasants from life, and similar figures appear throughout his peasant paintings from about 1640 to 1660.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.

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.