A Music Party before a Village

Viewed from a high vantage point up the slope of a hill, a variety of people go about their business in an unidentified landscape streaked with the long shadows of evening. The sunset scene shows a gentle transition from the natural landscape of rugged trees that frame the front of the picture to the man-made one further back, which includes an avenue of trees, manicured formal gardens, a church and a manor house.Among the figures are courting couples and a number of gardeners, both suggestive of fertility and fruitfulness. In the front right corner of the picture, three women make music: one sings, one plays the flute and one plays the lute. The fourth member of their party has put down his violin and is instead engaged in an ambiguous exchange: he twists to reach out to a woman, who bends over responsively as her male companion looks on, apparently startled. The group anticipates the eighteenth-century fêtes galantes (‘courtship parties’) made famous by the artist Jean-Antoine Watteau.The picture has been dated to the 1640s and 1650s on account of the costumes. The landscape seems to be the work of a follower of the landscape painter Joos de Momper II, but the figures appear to have been painted by a different artist. The inscription seems to be a later addition in an attempt to attribute the picture to David Vinckboons (1576–1632/3).