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1 of 253523 objects
A Horse Fair in front of a Town c.1660-68
Oil on canvas | 69.5 x 82.2 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 405330
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By the time he painted this late work Wouwermans was a celebrated artist, whose trademark was the depiction of horses; here he sets out a parade of them seen from various different points of view. His principal figures are now cavaliers and bourgeois couples. By this date there is a rich repertoire of images of village and town fairs from throughout Europe, including the Flemish kermis by artists such as Jan Brueghel; and the Italian fiera, seen in Jacques Callot’s Fair at Impruneta of 1620 or Lingelbach’s Village Festival of c.1650 (Castle Museum, Nottingham). Wouwermans’s town appears essentially Dutch, but the landscape falls away in a wide dish-shape to allow us to survey the panorama, according to the conventions of landscape painting rather than the topography of the Netherlands.
This painting allows us a fascinating glimpse of a seventeenth-century toy stall, at the left edge (children in the foreground walk off clutching purchases). We also see a high, makeshift stage in the middle distance upon which a theatrical presentation is underway. It is tempting to suggest that William Hogarth might have seen this painting or others like it when working on his Southwark Fair of 1733 (Private Collection).
This painting appears in Pyne's Illustrated Royal Residences of 1819, hanging in the Golden Drawing Room at Carlton House (RCIN 922188).
Signed lower left corner: PHW (much rubbed)Provenance
Purchased by George IV from Sir Thomas Baring as part of a group of 86 Dutch and Flemish paintings, most of which were collected by Sir Thomas’s father, Sir Francis Baring; they arrived at Carlton House on 6 May 1814; recorded in the Colonnade Room at Carlton House in 1819 (no 144); in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace in 1841 (no 133)
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Medium and techniques
Oil on canvas
Measurements
69.5 x 82.2 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external)
92.9 x 106.3 x 8.0 cm (frame, external)
Other number(s)