St George’s Day Kermis

c. 1665

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 77.8 cm × width 105.8 cm

Inscriptions

signature, bottom right, on the block of stone: D · TENIERS · FEC

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 13 December 2006

Conservation

H. Kat, 1995: cleaned and restored

Provenance

…; collection Jeanne-Baptiste d’Albert de Luynes, Comtesse de Verrue (Verrua) (1670-1736), Paris, or perhaps her properties at Meudon; her sale, Paris (auction house not known), 27 March 1737, no. 114 (‘Un tableau de Teniers qui représente une Kermesse’), frs. 1,205, or 29 April 1737, no. 2 (‘Un Teniers representent une Kermesse’), frs. 1,205,¹ ? to Jean-Denis Lempereur II (1701-79) and certainly in his collection by 1762/63;² anonymous sale [Lempereur], Paris (A.C. Chariot et al.), 24 May 1773, no. 43 (‘David Teniers Une Fête flamande qu’on a vu autrefois dans le cabinet de Madame la Comtesse de Verue: Tableau capital par sa perfection & le grand nombre de figures dont il est composé. Les unes dansent, les autres sont à table, & toutes forment l’aspect les plus agréable par la variété de leurs attitudes & de leurs occupations Hauteur 30 pouces largeur 40 [81 x 108 cm] T’), frs. 10,001, to the dealer Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun;³…; sale, Pierre-Louis-Paul Randon de Boisset (1708-76, Paris), Paris (P. Rémy), 27 February 1779 sqq., no. 59 (‘David Teniers Une Fête Flamande composée de cinquante-cinque figures, sur toile qui porte 2 pieds 5 pouces de haut, sur 3 pieds quatre pouces [78.3 x 108 cm] Ce Tableau […] vient du Cabinet de M. Lempereur’), frs. 9,999, to his nephew and heir, Jean-Louis Millon Dainval (1749-1812) for the Comte de Merle;⁴…; sale, Joseph-Hyacinthe-François de Paule de Rigaud, Comte de Vaudreuil (1740-1817), Paris (J.-B.P. Lebrun), 24 November 1784, no. 31 (‘DAVID TENIERS. Une Fête Flamande, composée de cinquante-cinque figures, les unes dansent, les autres sont à table, et toutes forment l’aspect le plus agréable par la variété de leur action. Ce Morceau de la plus haute réputation vient du cabinet de Madame la Comtesse de Verue, de celui de M. Lempereur, Nº43 vendu 10001 livres et dernier de celui de M. de Boisset Nº 59, & vendue 9999 livres 19. Hauteur 30 pouces, largeur 40 pouces [81 x 108 cm] T’), frs. 11,000, to Le Rouge;⁵…; collection Jacob Hoofman (1739-99), Haarlem;⁶ his daughter Maria Hoofman (1776-1845) (‘een Landelijk Feest, insoelijks gestoffeerd door D. Teniers’);⁷ from whom or from whose estate purchased privately by the dealer Christianus Johannes Nieuwenhuys, 30 January 1846; from whom, fl. 15,000, to King Willem II of the Netherlands;⁸ his sale, The Hague (J. de Vries et al.), 12 August 1850, no. 79 (‘David Teniers H. 76 L. 103 Toile. Fête Flamande, Dans la cour d’une habitation villageoise une foule d’individus s’amusent à danser: sur l’avantplan, à droite, une société de villageois et de villageoises est assise autour d’une table bien servie, au centre du tableau quelques groups d’enfants; et à gauche un paysan ivre est soutenu par une vieille femme; un homme placé sur un tonneau vide joue la cornemuse. Plus loin sous un treillage, un groupe est occupé à manger et à boire’), fl. 12,300, to the dealer Johannes Albertus Brondgeest for Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854);⁹ by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam with the rest of his collection, 1854;¹⁰ on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 1885; on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2004-11

Object number: SK-C-298

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

The artist

David Teniers II (Antwerp 1610 - Brussels 1690)

The prolific, highly successful small-scale figure and landscape painter David Teniers II was the eldest son of the artist David Teniers I and Dymphna de Wilde; he was baptized in the Sint-Jacobskerk, Antwerp, on 15 December 1610. Taught by his father, he became a master in the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1632/33.¹¹ His first, extant signed and dated picture is of 1633 in which year he took on the first of his four Antwerp apprentices. On 22 June 1637 he married Anna Brueghel (1620-1656), the daughter of Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625), in a ceremony at which Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was a witness; she brought property and wealth to the marriage. He was appointed dean of the guild of St Luke for the year 1645/46.

The following years saw his first contacts with the important collectors, Antoon Triest, Bishop of Ghent, and still more significantly, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the governor of the Spanish Netherlands, whose court painter he became in 1651. Teniers settled in Brussels, and by 1657 was further appointed ‘ayuda da camera’ at the archducal court; his duties consisted in advising on the great range of artistic purchases made by the archduke particularly from the sales of the collections of the executed King Charles I of Great Britain and of the duke of Hamilton (1606-1644). He was sent to England by the count of Fuensaldaña (1603-1661) for this purpose between 1651 and 1655.¹² For the archduke he also painted capriccio views of the display of his picture collection and prepared an etched catalogue of his Italian paintings, the Theatrum Pictorium, published in 1660. In 1656 following the death of his wife, he married Isabella de Fren. In the same year, his position as court painter to Leopold Wilhelm’s successor was confirmed; but it lapsed in 1659 under the next incumbent, with whom, however, Teniers was on friendly terms.

By 1662 he had bought the estate of Perk and the country house Dry Toren, not far from Het Steen – the property which Rubens had bought in 1635 – from Helena Fourment’s second husband, Jan-Baptist van Brouchoven van Bergeyck. Teniers was instrumental in obtaining from King Philip IV of Spain the charter to found a painters’ academy in Antwerp which was granted in 1663. He continued to work and sell paintings from his house in Brussels, in spite of objections from the Brussels guild of St Luke. In 1663 he was granted the noble status he had greatly desired. But his art was to become less popular and out of fashion, and his last years were marred by financial disputes with the children of his first marriage, so that he died in poverty. He was buried probably on 25 April 1690 in Brussels; his place of burial is not known.

REFERENCES
Klinge in M. Klinge and D. Lüdke (eds.), David Teniers der Jüngere 1610-1690: Alltag und Vergnügen in Flandern, exh. cat. Karlsruhe (Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) 2005-06, pp. 14-19; H. Vlieghe, David Teniers (1610-1690): A Biography, Turnhout 2011

Entry

This kermis was owned by four celebrated French collectors in the eighteenth century and was acquired by Van der Hoop at the King Willem III of the Netherlands sale of 1850. That it is an authentic work by David Teniers II cannot be doubted; Klinge dates it to the mid-1660s, about the same time as the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Peasant Dance in which the same unidentified church tower with the onion-shaped top is depicted in the distance.¹³ Some of the foreground protagonists are also similar: the woman in the red jacket to the left, the mother and child at table to the right, and the costumes of the dancing pair in the centre of the museum picture and to the right in the New York picture. The window panes in the present painting were rendered using the sgraffito technique.

Unusually in his treatment of such scenes, the location of the museum kermis is in a village; also exceptional is the table set beneath a pergola. The St George’s flag, held by the man in the upper window of the thatched inn, identifies the celebration specifically as a St George’s Day (April 23) festivity – a subject that Teniers treated for the greater part of his career. It was made popular by Pieter Bruegel I (1526/30-1569),¹⁴ whose granddaughter Teniers married in 1637.

Teniers here records two dance steps, both of which were earlier rendered by Bruegel in his Peasant Wedding Dance;¹⁵ the workshop of Pieter Brueghel II (1564-1638) continued to depict such dances during Teniers’s early years¹⁶ as in the St George’s Day Kermis,¹⁷ which were also set in a village. Teniers’s depictions were very probably recollections from the life as drawings show that he attended such events.¹⁸ In spite of, or because of this, the artist adhered to certain distinctive formulae; for instance, the cutting of the ham and the fallen drunkard. By this stage in his career, he adopted a more benign attitude than previously towards the self-indulgent behaviour of the peasantry and the poorer sort on holidays.

Excursus on the Provenance
The Countess of Verrue, Jeanne-Baptiste d’Albert de Luynes, may have begun her collection while she was still living (1690-1700) in Savoy as the mistress of Amadeus II Duke of Savoy. Once back in Paris she is credited with greatly adding to the popularity of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish pictures. Her collection came to be divided between her hôtel in the rue Cherche Midi, Paris, acquired in 1701, where there were some 400 pictures at her death, and her two properties at Meudon, acquired in 1713 and 1719, where there were some 90 pictures at her death. She had built a ‘grande galerie’ in her Parisian hôtel by 1720; her collection was already mentioned in the 1718 edition of Germain Brice, Description de la Ville de Paris.¹⁹ The inventory made after her death seems not sufficiently detailed for identifications to be made. Only one painting could be a candidate for identification with the Rijksmuseum kermis: ‘Un tableau peint sur toile représentant une danse dans sa bordure de bois doré prisé mille livres …’.²⁰ It was later owned by three other celebrated collectors in the eighteenth century and was acquired by Van der Hoop at the King William II of the Netherlands sale in 1850.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

M. Klinge, David Teniers de Jonge. Schilderijen, tekeningen, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1991, no. 89

Collection catalogues

1885, p. 107, no. 211; 1887, p. 165, no. 1408; 1903, p. 259, no. 2296; 1934, p. 277, no. 2296; 1960, p. 299, no. 2296; 1976, p. 535, no. C 298

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'David (II) Teniers, St George’s Day Kermis, c. 1665', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5563

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