(Hulst 1528–1598 Antwerp)
A Kermesse,
oil on panel, 64 x 101 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Millon & Associés, Paris, 13 December 2013, lot 23;
Private collection, Belgium

The present panel by Gillis Mostaert, is a characteristically vibrant and diverse depiction of life in the fairgrounds at the edge of a Flemish town. The slashed sleeves, baggy breeches and brightly coloured hose of many of the figures, who drink, lounge and fight, identify them as soldiers, while peasants dance behind and tradesmen tend their market stalls. These Kermesse pictures, for which Mostaert was celebrated, were probably painted relatively late in the artist’s career. Perhaps executed in the same decade as his Feast of Saint George of the 1580s in the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent (inv. no. 1952-F), Mostaert here shows the influence of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, particularly in the leading lines of the carefully arranged rustic buildings running into the picture space framings the multitude of differently posed fair-goers.

Mostaert was a relation of Jan Mostaert and, according to Friedländer, a pupil of Jan Mandyn (see M. J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, V, Leiden and Brussels 1969, p. 60), which may explain the Boschian nature of some of his early hell paintings. He was admitted to the Antwerp guild of Saint Luke in 1554-5 and painted a wide variety of genres and subjects.