(Utrecht 1640 – after 1673)
A village kermis with merry making peasants,
oil on panel, 49 x 68.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Noble collection, Austria

We are grateful to Ellis Dullaart from the RKD, The Hague, for suggesting the attribution to Cornelis Droochsloot on the basis of a photograph.

We are also grateful to Luuk Pijl for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a photograph and for his help in cataloguing the present lot. He suggests a date of execution in the 1660s, during a period where Droochsloot was highly prolific and at the height of his career.

The present charming and well-preserved panel by Cornelis Droochsloot shows a street lined with small houses and inns on both sides, a church with a festive banner beyond, and a busy hubbub of animated activity. All along the wide road, people energise the scene and give it a lively character. The Dutch word kermis derives from kerk, meaning ‘church’ and mis for ‘mass’, describing the mass said on the anniversary of the foundation of a parish or church, celebrated with feasting, dancing and sports. As is the case here, the figures depicted can be observed in various activities: eating and drinking at tables put up in front of inns and conversing.

A prolific painter of town and village scenes, Droochsloot was active in Utrecht, where he trained under his father Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot. After the death of his father in 1666, Cornelis Droochsloot took over the workshop. As in the works of his father, the architecture in the present painting is used to provide scale and structure to the suggested space. The figures of the young people show, in the way they are executed, the influence of Esaias van de Velde, who died in 1630. However, typical of Cornelis Droochsloot is the scant use of shadow and the rapid execution of the figures.