Rural Feast

The State Hermitage can boast one of the world's finest collections of works by the famous Flemish painter David Teniers the Younger. Over 40 paintings from the time when the artist was at his peak demonstrate the main facets of his oeuvre and reveal the distinctive nature of his style. On the left, at a distance from the peasants who are dancing and making merry, the artist depicted a group of nobles that have come to look at the rural festivities. In a dedication to an engraving of the painting made in 1736 (when it was in the collection of the Countess de Verrue), Jacques Philippe Lebas remarked that in the group of nobles Teniers depicted himself and his family (the Hermitage owns two prints from this engraving). Today Le Bas's suggestion is regarded as incorrect, since it is impossible to precisely identify the personages with the painter himself and his relatives.