A merry group of peasants and rustics enjoy themselves at a village celebration. A fiddler stands on a bench, legs wide apart, his playing encouraging the company to dance. One man responds in a typically bucolic fashion: back bent, knee raised. An urchin cheekily sticks his head between the fiddler’s legs. Beside them sits a man, carried away by the music and dancing – and more than likely by alcohol too – leaning back, gesticulating broadly with the pipe in his right hand. The man in the doorway, possibly the innkeeper, mouth wide open, raises his glass aloft. He is tipsy: his hat has slipped down over his eyes. On the right, two peasants support a third, evidently so drunk that the other two, laughing uproariously, have to hold him up. In the background the activities of the fair continue. Adults and children crowd around the market stalls and pigs rootle about.
Cornelis Dusart was apprenticed to Adriaen van Ostade and specialized in painting scenes of rural life. He signed and dated the painting lower right, on the plough, C. Dusart f. 1684.
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