(Haarlem 1660–1704)
A village fair,
signed lower left: CoR dusart,
oil on panel, 49.5 x 64.7 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of B. Mynter (according to label on the reverse);
sale, Notarishuis, Rotterdam, 7–11 March 1974;
with David Koetser, Zurich, 1975;
where acquired by the present owner

The present painting is listed in the RKD database under no. 7581 (as Cornelis Dusart).

The present painting can be dated to around 1690. It is a version after Adriaen van Ostade’s prototype, once in the collection of Anton Philips, Eindhoven (see sale, Christie’s, London, 6 December 2007, lot 14).

The work under discussion depicts a group of figures in the foreground gathered outside a tavern, including a man with a dog, some men with pipes who are drinking, and a couple of figures playing a hurdy gurdy and a violin. Smoking and drinking were particularly popular subjects for Dutch and Flemish painters in the seventeenth century. The scene is set against the backdrop of some market stalls, crowds of local country folk and some animals wandering through a village.

Cornelis Dusart was born in Haarlem in 1660 and became a member of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke in 1679. He was a dedicated pupil of Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685). The compositions of many of his earlier paintings were heavily reliant on Van Ostade’s peasant scenes and subjects taken from everyday life of the Dutch lower class. When Van Ostade died in 1685, Dusart took over his entire workshop and its contents and reworked and sold many of van Ostade’s drawings, and completed some of his unfinished paintings and drawings as well. As a result of these reworkings, Dusart absorbed elements of the style and subjects of Adriaen van Ostade, and that of his brother, Isaac van Ostade (1621–1649). Dusart’s technique was distinct from that of Van Ostade in his treatment of foliage, which would often be more delicate, and he also used a lighter palette. In his later career the artist was more heavily influenced by the Dutch painter Jan Steen. Dusart suffered from ill health for much of his life and died in Haarlem in 1704.