The Wedding Dance

With its myriad playful details, bawdy humor, and acute narrative sensibility, The Outdoor Wedding Dance has long been celebrated as the high point of Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s oeuvre and has rightly been described by Georges Marlier, the great early twentieth-century scholar of Flemish art, as ‘one of the most popular of all subjects in Flemish painting at the beginning of the seventeenth century’ (G. Marlier, Pierre Brueghel le Jeune, Brussels, 1969, p. 188). Whirling dancers in the foreground cavort tipsily, enjoying the bagpipe music and festive mood, a few tipping back large jugs of wine for a swig. Some, carried away, embrace amorously, while a few men at left, their backs to the viewer, relieve themselves discreetly at the party's edge. At background center, before a colored sheet strung up between two trees, is the focus of all the revelry: the bride, sitting beneath a makeshift crown that honors her as "Queen for a Day", bemusedly watches guests place coins on the pewter plate before her. She is surrounded by eager onlookers, who survey the offerings while a robed man who diligently records her gifts.

The Outdoor Wedding Dance is one of the Brueghel family’s most enduringly popular compositions, with at least 30 recorded autograph versions by Pieter the Younger, and many contemporary copies by his followers, such as the present work. This spectacular success has been credited by some to the serious moral undertone of this seemingly joyful celebration, warning of the attendant perils of overindulgence, lust or greed. Yet this interpretation is far from certain. Instead, these works can be regarded as exemplifying the witty and intelligently observed combination of naturalism and humor that has ensured their undiminished popularity and relevance from the seventeenth century until the present day.

Considered by Marlier to be an autograph version by Pieter the Younger (loc. cit.), and catalogued under questioned attributions by Klaus Ertz (loc. cit.), the present panel appears to have been painted by a distinctive hand that is close to Brueghel, but who exhibits delightful idiosyncrasies, such as the tendency to paint his figures with blushed noses.

The composition of The Wedding Dance relates to an untraced drawing or painting by Pieter Bruegel I, known from an engraving by Pieter van der Heyden, published by Hieronymus Cock. A painted panel and a gouache derived from the same source are also known by Jan Breughel I (Bordeaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Paris, Musée du Louvre). Pieter II's works of this type, along with copies by his contemporary followers, such as the present panel, can be divided into two groups: those painted in the same sense as Van der Heyden's engraving, and those in reverse. The present picture, together with the majority of autograph versions, belongs to the latter group, all believed ultimately to derive from a lost work by Pieter I rather than from the engraving.

One painting by Pieter Bruegel I has been proposed as the original Wedding Dance (Detroit, Detroit Institute of Fine Arts, inv. 30.374) after which Pieter II modeled his highly popular version. However, the composition of the Detroit picture differs in numerous ways from that of the present painting, including being oriented in the opposite direction. Recent research into Pieter II's career has shed light his working practices: as access to his father's original paintings was not always possible, it seems likely that he often worked from detailed drawings his father had made in preparation for his own paintings. Given the differences between the present Wedding Dance and the Pieter I version in Detroit, it seems likely that for his paintings Pieter II was working from one of his father's meticulous drawings rather than from the painted panel.