A Country Dance

Dutch School



A Country Dance

Dutch School

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing from the Dutch School. The drawing shows a group of people dancing in a rural setting. In the foreground men and women have formed a circle, holing hands, and to the left stand three musicians providing the music. In the centre background is a large house with a tower, and to the right of this is a cottage and a windmill beyond. To the right of the dancers is a large tree trunk, and the countryside in the background is made up of fields and trees. The dancers are all wearing contemporary dress. Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society: "No. 24 DUTCH SCHOOL (About 1525) A COUNTRY DANCE Metropolitan Museum, New York. Pen and ink. 19 x 28.5 cm. (7 1/2 x 11 1/4 in.) Nine couples, of various ages and distinguished by great diversity of costume, dance ina ring to the sound of instruments played by three musicians. A jester sits on the ground. The chief feature in the landscape is a large country house with a stork's nest on the chimney, surmounted by the tower of an adjacent church. Towards the right are a cottage and a windmill. The landscape and large tree are drawn entirely in black ink, the figures chiefly in brown, tending in some places towards grey, in others towards yellow. The musicians, the jester, and the first four figures on the left in the background are partly drawn with the black ink used for the landscape; small portions of the costume of the fifth figure are also black. The choice of costumes, of the dancers are not intended to be of different nationalities, betrays a curious eclecticism on the part of the artist. Many of the figures - the man with his back to us exactly in the middle, the third and fourth persons from the right in the same row, the portly man with pheasants' plumes standing erect in his hat - strike one as purely German, and might be the work of one of the Augsburg illustrators, Weiditz or Breu. The woman with her hair twisted and hanging down her back wear Italian drapery of the Quattrocento. The women facing us, on the other hand, suggest only the Netherlands. The three nearest to the left, including the elderly woman in a hood, suggest nothing so much as Lucas van Leyden. The wide hat of the woman next to the tree seems also to be Netherlandish, as the impression that this is the predominant influence is confirmed by every feature of the landscape and architecture. The costumes suggest the third decade of the sixteenth century as the probably date, and the drawing may be provisionally ascribed to some follower of Lucan van Leyden. C. D."


Object Name

A Country Dance

Creators Name

Dutch School

Date Created

1908-1909

Dimensions

support: 45.6cm x 38.1cm

accession number

1932.72.24

Medium


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