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Lot Essay
When this work first appeared at auction in March of 1927, it was sold alongside two additional fragments, all from the same large panel. The first (lot 16) shows the bride seated at a table receiving gifts, the second (lot 17, the present panel), depicts revelers dancing to the music of two bagpipe players, and the third (lot 18) illustrates three men standing before the ladder to the barn's loft (fig. 1). When the latter panel reappeared at auction in 2016 (see Doyle, New York, 26 October 2016, lot 10), the clover-shaped panel maker's mark of Michiel Claessens (active 1590-1636) was identified on the reverse, as well as brands depicting two hands and a castle, the hallmarks of the city of Antwerp. These marks provide a terminus post quem dating for the group of 1619. Notably, the earliest signed and dated Wedding dance in the barn is inscribed 1611 (Paris, Private collection), followed by later works dated to the early 1620s.
The Wedding Dance in the Barn is among Pieter Brueghel the Younger's most popular peasant scenes, evidenced by the thirteen surviving autograph variants included in Klaus Ertz's catalogue raisonné of the artist's work (op. cit., pp. 716-720). The invention of the composition is somewhat uncertain. Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Peasant Wedding Feast and The Peasant Dance both in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, are precursors to the theme, though no such indoor wedding dance by the Elder survives. Another panel, The Wedding Dance, now in the Detroit Institute of Arts, is the most obvious exemplar by the Elder for the barn group, however the authorship and dating of that panel has been questioned by Ertz (op. cit., p. 664). It is most likely this composition represents a reinvention by Pieter Brueghel the Younger after an engraving of the Elder's design by Pieter van der Heyden, published by Hieronymus Cock (fig. 2). The Younger moves the scene inside the barn, and has significantly changed the arrangement of the figures, while maintaining the lively spirit of the scene.
The Wedding Dance in the Barn is among Pieter Brueghel the Younger's most popular peasant scenes, evidenced by the thirteen surviving autograph variants included in Klaus Ertz's catalogue raisonné of the artist's work (op. cit., pp. 716-720). The invention of the composition is somewhat uncertain. Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Peasant Wedding Feast and The Peasant Dance both in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, are precursors to the theme, though no such indoor wedding dance by the Elder survives. Another panel, The Wedding Dance, now in the Detroit Institute of Arts, is the most obvious exemplar by the Elder for the barn group, however the authorship and dating of that panel has been questioned by Ertz (op. cit., p. 664). It is most likely this composition represents a reinvention by Pieter Brueghel the Younger after an engraving of the Elder's design by Pieter van der Heyden, published by Hieronymus Cock (fig. 2). The Younger moves the scene inside the barn, and has significantly changed the arrangement of the figures, while maintaining the lively spirit of the scene.