Provenance: private collection.
Here, Hans van Wechelen offers us a village kermesse full of delightful and lively details.
In Flanders, kermesses took place to celebrate Saints Days to...
read moreProvenance: private collection.
Here, Hans van Wechelen offers us a village kermesse full of delightful and lively details.
In Flanders, kermesses took place to celebrate Saints Days to whom churches and the country’s town and village guilds were dedicated. These kermesses went hand in hand with processions, popular festivities, open-air theatrical shows and all sorts of games and dances. A recurring theme in Flemish genre painting, Pieter Brueghel the Elder and his contemporaries portrayed these sorts of festivities with a particular fondness.
Our village kermesse evokes the celebration of Saint George to fête the arrival of spring as indicated by the inn’s banner on which the saint appears in armour, with a reconstitution of the battle between the Saint and the dragon. The portrayal of village kermesses also emphasised the social differences that existed in 16th century Flemish society. Van Wechelen liked to mix patrician couples with crowds of peasants. Their refined air and their deportment clearly stand out against the general behaviour of the crowd.
An original composition with no reference to any known work, this kermesse is particularly striking owing to the independence of its style. The slim, elongated characters, as well as the incredibly rich colours are all characteristics particular to Van Wechelen. Following a procedure commonly used in numerous paintings of the time, the artist does not hesitate to portray the entire village fête, regardless of the chronology of the events. Here we find ourselves in front of the religious procession taking place alongside the theatrical show, which, in turn, intermingles with scenes of banquets, games and dances or various brawls between peasants. The whole forms a cleverly orchestrated composition, in which the viewer’s gaze effortlessly evolves as it scans the thousand and one details illustrating the jubilant community.
A theme dear to our artist, the kermesse is an occasion for him to depict an important moment in popular life at that time. Animated by a multitude of small scenes, one more amusing and surprising than the other, our panel is a true homage to the pleasures of life. Hans van Wechelen’s seduces the viewer with his subject and his use of lively colours: he clearly asserts himself as equal to the great genre painters of the 16th century.
Ca. 1530 – Antwerp – between 1590 and 1600
Born in Antwerp during the first half of the 16th century, Hans van Wechelen (also known as Jan van Wechelen) is mentioned for the first time as a...
read moreCa. 1530 – Antwerp – between 1590 and 1600
Born in Antwerp during the first half of the 16th century, Hans van Wechelen (also known as Jan van Wechelen) is mentioned for the first time as a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1557. A painter of religious subjects, allegorical scenes as well as portraits, Hans van Wechelen never left the banks of the Scheldt. He collaborated with Cornelis van Dalem, whose paintings he peopled with a multitude of small characters.
The artist’s reputation grew at the beginning of the 17th century when his paintings were added to Antwerp’s most prestigious collections. Cornelis van der Geest as well as Rubens each acquired one of the master’s paintings. Pieter Stevens collected around a dozen. The wars of religion, the sacking of the churches of Antwerp by the iconoclasts as well as the plundering of the town by Spanish troops, destroyed the great majority of Van Wechelen’s works.
With a style similar to that of the Brunswick Monogrammist, Cornelis Massijs or Jan Sanders van Hemessen, Hans van Wechelen succeeded in bringing his kermesses (village fêtes) to life in a very particular way. Close to Pieter Brueghel the Elder in this sense, Van Wechelen did not hesitate to animate picturesque scenes with a great number of characters with comical and delightful attitudes.
In his non-religious works, the movement and conception of a new reality reveals a rather profane spirit. His confident lines with clearly emphasised forms unite the master with the rigorist trends that were developing in the Netherlands circa 1540. Although extremely rare, the quality of this artist’s kermesses make him a predominantly genre painter.
