company news about Jan Havicksz Steen - The Dancing Couple

The Dancing Couple is an oil-on-canvas painting that was created by Jan Steen in 1663. It depicts a boisterous party with a dancing couple in the center. This painting is part of the Widener Collection, which currently resides in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The setting of the painting is a kermis, which is a local village fair that several Dutch artworks referenced. Kermises were extremely popular in the Bruegel tradition. The Dancing Couple was one of the few paintings which started a new era in Dutch art. Paintings like these depicts a setting which was inspired by the rural working class of the Dutch people. This was a significant change for Dutch art as these settings highlighted a thriving period in their history. A new perspective was shown which changed the way traditional Dutch art was looked at as they focused more on the realistic rural working lifestyle and values of the Dutch people.

Jan Steen depicts a scene that highlights a wide variety of moods and activities, which altogether create an energetic environment. There are more than a dozen subjects in this horizontal painting, all of whom are enjoying themselves. Most of them are dressed in shades of grey, green, and black. Grayish green and yellow floral vines take up the upper portion of this painting, giving it visual depth. In the background stand two men and a woman on the other side of the fence. Their conversation is unknown as they stay huddled together in secrecy. A woman in a greenish-yellow top and grey skirt sits at the very front of the painting, while her child in a bright orange dress stands and gazes at the entertainment with amusement in her eyes. Behind them sits a woman who drinks her wine, meanwhile a man touches her chin while smiling. She wears a black dress with white ruffles, and he wears a brown shirt with a white drape around his neck. Behind the people eating at the table are two couples talking and laughing together and three men who stand and watch the couple in the middle of the room dancing. The woman wears a salmon pink dress and the man next to her wears shades of brown and black. The man next to him sits beside his wife and son while drinking wine and watching the woman in pink lustfully.