Peasants Merrymaking Outside an
Inn (Previously “Fair at Warmond”)

ca. 1676

Jan Steen(Leiden 1626 –1679 Leiden)

102.5 x 181.6 cm

oil on canvas
signed in dark paint, lower center: “JSteen”(“JS” in ligature)
JS-108Currently on view at: The National Museum ofChina, Beijing

How To Cite
Kloek, Wouter. "Peasants Merrymaking Outside an Inn (Previously “Fair at Warmond”)." In The Leiden
Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
This page is available on the site's Archive. PDF of every version of this page is available on the Archive,
and the Archive is managed by a permanent URL. Archival copies will never be deleted. New versions areadded only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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This large painting from the last years of Jan Steen’s remarkable career isComparative Figures

one of the master’s most expansive depictions of a country fair. The
merrymaking takes place beneath tall trees in front of an inn, to the right ofwhich, at some remove, are market stalls and a castle gate. The flag
hanging from the tower window of a distant church was a signal that a fair
was being celebrated that very day. In the midst of the festivities are twointertwined couples dancing to the tunes of a young violinist and a hurdygurdy player who has climbed on top of a table. Other figures sit and relax
smoking or drinking, while some revelers greet each other with smiles and

Fig 1. Jan Steen, PeasantsDancing before an Inn, ca. 1647,
panel, 38.5 x 56.5 cm,
Mauritshuis, The Hague, inv. 553

the doffing of hats. Near the inn a man and a woman toast each other withunrestrained exuberance. Leaning out of a window from the building’s
second floor is a man helping his vomiting female companion, an
indication that the gaiety will continue, perhaps to dubious ends.
A crown of flowers, attached to a rope strung between two trees, hangs
above the dancers. Such crowns were hung up for festive occasions,
including weddings and the celebration of the birthday of the Prince ofOrange.[1] The flag attached to the inn is a frequent feature in depictions ofsixteenth-century fairs honoring saints’ days by such artists as Pieter

Fig 2. Circle of Jan Beerstraaten,
The Church of Warmond, ca.
1660, black chalk, gray wash,
175 x 225 mm, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, RP-T-1879-A-22

Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525–69) and David Vinckboons (1576–ca. 1632).
Such Catholic festivities, however, were not officially celebrated inprotestant Holland and, as Steen provides no explicit clues as to thenature of the celebration, it is probable that he depicted a generic eventand not a specific feast day.[2]Steen has portrayed a wide array of humanity in this country setting
characters familiar from his earlier works. A particularly engaging figure is
the woman with a low-cut dress who holds her sleeping young child close
to her bosom with one hand while grasping a white earthenware bowl withthe other. The bowl will soon be filled with shrimp being sold by thefishmonger once he is paid by the woman’s husband.[3] It has beensuggested that the couple is Steen and his wife, although this identification
is highly doubtful.[4] The boy looking at her, probably their son, is eating
cherries from his hat, clearly preferring fruit to shrimp.

Fig 3. Detail before restoration,
Jan Steen, Peasants
Merrymaking Outside anInn, JS-108 (photo courtesy of
RKD (Rijksbureau voor
Kunsthistorische
Documentatie/Netherlands
Institute for Art History))

Many of Steen’s figural groups create scenarios that relate to popularsayings and proverbs. In the center of the painting one sees an unfolding
courtship scene, where an older man takes the hand of a country lass,perhaps to invite her join in the dance. The man’s attire is so outlandishly© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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old-fashioned that even in Steen’s day it must have been considered
ridiculous. Just behind this man, Steen has depicted two dogs sniffing
each other, suggesting the underlying baseness for his attentions to theyoung woman.[5] This motif harkens back to one of Steen’s first works withmerrymaking peasants, Peasants Dancing before an Inn (fig 1).[6] Near
this group is a fisherman, recognizable as such by his blue woolen cap,
who sits at a low table holding a clay pipe in his hand. He smiles
approvingly at a boy drinking from a large jug. Lying on the barrel nearthem are smokers’ requisites and, presumably, dice. This little vignette is a
visual reference to the saying “As the old sing, so twitter the young,” a[7]theme that Steen often depicted in his paintings.

Fig 4. Rembrandt van Rijn,
Woman Urinating, 1631, etching,
81 x 64 mm, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-637

In the right foreground an old man leaning on his cane stares lasciviously
at a woman relieving herself. She squats near a bridge crossing a small
body of water, beyond which lies a boy eating turnips. The fact that the boy
looks at the viewer suggests that Steen intended him to introduce a note ofirony to the scene, perhaps based on the well-known saying “to pull thewool over someone’s eyes,” the Dutch equivalent of which,iemand knollen
voor citroenen verkopen, literally means “to sell someone turnips forlemons.” [8]In the middle distance, a horseman—to judge from his attire, an officer in
the States army—gestures expansively toward the merrymakers as headdresses an elegantly dressed young woman. Between the horseman
and the woman, a yelping poodle, most likely the woman’s pet, begs forattention. The woman is accompanied by her children, a sumptuously
dressed girl who clings to her mother’s skirt and the girl’s older brother.
The boy’s costume provides some indication of the painting’s late date, forthe cravat around his neck, a lace cloth tied with a bow, was a fashionable
item of apparel first introduced around 1670. The handkerchief hanging
nonchalantly from his coat pocket was also a costly article of clothing.[9]This youth, who is accompanied by a greyhound, haggles with a peasantboy holding up a basket, undoubtedly containing a songbird. This elegant
family may well have arrived at the country fair in the carriage stopped by
the castle gate. The gentleman sitting in the carriage is presumably the
woman’s husband.
In numerous Dutch paintings and prints, town-dwellers are shownobserving merrymaking peasants. “Aensiet dit boersche volk” (Look at© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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these peasant folk) are the first words of the caption to an engraving byWillem van Swanenburgh after David Vinckboons. This motif also appears
elsewhere in Steen’s work, as in Village Fair of the early 1650s and WinterLandscape in Skokloster.[10] Here, it seems likely that Steen simply
wanted to present an array of people from different walks of life rather thanhighlighting the differences between townspeople and country folk.
In the eighteenth century the Leiden Collection painting was identified
as Fair at Warmond, as is evident from a drawn copy by Leiden
draughtsman Pieter Leonard Delfos made in 1789.[11] Warmond is avillage near Leiden where Steen lived in the late 1650s, but none of thebuildings in this painting resemble those from that village. The church in
Warmond, for example, had a quite different appearance. In 1573 a fire
had destroyed the structure, and seventeenth-century worshippers
gathered in the restored choir, which was connected to the still-existing
tower by a completely dilapidated nave. The situation is recorded in a
drawing of around 1660 by an artist in the circle of Jan Beerstraaten(fig2).[12] Another argument against Warmond is that neither of the two castles
in the area—Lokhorst, also known as Oud-Teilingen, or WarmondCastle—had this kind of gate.
A more likely source of inspiration for Steen than Warmond was
Wassenaar, which had a church tower similar in shape to that in thepainting. The nave of the Wassenaar church was flanked by a south aisle,
which probably could not be distinguished from the nave when seen from a
distance. Moreover, Ter Weer Castle, located near Wassenaar, had a gatethat resembles that in Steen’s painting.[13] The similarities in its
appearance were initially even greater, but Steen raised the height of thegate’s roof during the painting’s execution, as can be seen in changes inpaint color in this area. Such topographical freedom is found in other latepaintings by Jan Steen, as in Garden Party of the Paets Family of 1677,
where Steen has depicted the family’s home on the Rapenburg canal in
Leiden as though it were in a spacious park landscape.[14]Jan Steen painted over 30 scenes of merrymaking peasants at an inn, notincluding peasant weddings, skittle players, and brawling rustics. He wasparticularly interested in this subject in his younger years. Although thispainting is not refined in every respect, it is among the most importantworks of Steen’s last period and testifies to his great talent for© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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composition. The artist has here distributed the various figures andvignettes over the canvas with great efficiency. The crowd seems
immense, but the individual figures are clearly distinguishable. Similarly,
Steen needed only a few tree trunks and some foliage to create theimpression of a leafy place by an inn.[15] In his later years he wassometimes unable to resist the temptation of painting a crowded scene ofmerrymaking peasants, as in A Village Revel (Herberg ’t Mis Verstant) of1673, in the British Royal Collection, but here he showed great restraint.[16]A not too surprising change was made to the painting in the past, probablyat the end of the eighteenth century or early in the nineteenth century. The
defecating woman was repainted so that her right hand was no longer
wiping her bottom but placing a milk pail in the ditch (fig 3).[17] The
overpainting was removed only in 1970. For this motif Steen drew
inspiration from Rembrandt’s etching Woman Urinating (fig 4).[18] He had
used this motif earlier in his career (though evidently in a concealed way),in his Peasant Fair in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.[19] Here,however, quite to the contrary, he quoted Rembrandt’s model with alacrity.
The elegant young woman and two children at the right may be membersof the patron’s family. It should be noted, however, that the extravagant
clothing of the two children seems more exaggerated than realistic (thegirl’s ermine collar is particularly over the top), so one must be careful
about coming to that conclusion.[20] The first known owner of the painting isWillemvan

Heemskerck(1613–92),

butwhetherheactuallycommissioned it is difficult to say. The four works by Steen from hiscollection differ greatly from each other and do not suggest that he had asystematic approach to his acquisitions of paintings. It is remarkable,
however, that two important late works by Jan Steen (Peasants
Merrymaking and JS-112) belonging to Van Heemskerck are once again
united in the same collection.[21]-Wouter Kloek© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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Endnotes
1. On weddings, see, for example, Steen’s painting of 1667 in the Wellington Museum, London(Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen [Rotterdam, 1980], no. 284), or his Wedding of1672 in the Rijksmuseum (Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen [Rotterdam, 1980],
no. 349); regarding the celebration of Prinsjesdag (Princes’ Day), see the painting in the
Rijksmuseum (Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen [Rotterdam, 1980], no. 276).
The Rhethoricians’ Festival in Brussels (Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen[Rotterdam, 1980], no. 227) also features a crown of flowers.
2. Flags of this kind in compositions by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and David Vinckboons
generally indicate that the celebration honors the name day of a specific saint, usually SaintGeorge or Saint Martin (as, for example, in the engraving after Pieter Bruegel,Fair of SaintGeorge [B. 207]). The Feast of Saint George is on 23 April, the Feast of Saint Martin on 11
November. Steen’s painting, however, cannot depict either of these occasions: the Feast ofSaint Martin was held in the fall and not the summer, and archers were always present at the
Feast of Saint George. Regarding the objections to such fairs in the protestant Dutch
Republic, see G. D. J. Schotel, Het Oud-Hollandsch huisgezin der zeventiende eeuw , ed. H.
C. Rogge (Arnhem, 1903), 348 (the faithful were warned every year “dat men zich had teonthouden van alle paepse formaliteiten en feesten, soo als Sinte Martijn, dryconighen,
onnosele kynderkens, vastelavent ende andersins” [that one should refrain from all Catholic
formalities and feasts, such as the Feasts of Saint Martin, the Three Kings, the Innocent
Children, Shrove Tuesday, and others]).
3. Shrimp sellers occur in all shapes and sizes in Steen’s paintings. A well-known example isthe shrimp seller in The Garden Outside an Inn in Berlin; see Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen
van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no. 152; and H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, andArthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller , ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat.
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (New Haven andLondon, 1996), no. 17. Steen sometimes portrayed the shrimp seller as an independent
subject; see Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no. B-66.
4. Tobias van Westrheene, Jan Steen: Étude sur L’Art en Hollande (The Hague, 1856), 120,
no. 94; for the evocative story inspired by this painting, see also Anna Tummers, ed.,Celebrating in the Golden Age (Exh. cat. Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum) (Rotterdam, 2011),
68.
5. A pair of sniffing dogs is frequently seen in Steen’s “village weddings.” See Karel Braun,Alleschilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), nos. 40–41. This man is dressed as the old
suitor in Steen’s The Cock Fight. See H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller , ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington
D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (New Haven and London, 1996),© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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6. Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no. 5; see also In the
Mauritshuis: Jan Steen (The Hague and Zwolle 2011), 24–25. The motif of the man lying at
the left—Steen painted such figures on numerous occasions—can also be traced to thisearly painting, in which a similar figure, but sleeping and in reverse, was presumably first
introduced by the artist.
7. See especially the painting of 1668 in the Rijksmuseum; Karel Braun,Alle schilderijen van
Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no. 295. See also Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan
Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), nos. 188, 200–2; and H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, andArthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller , ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat.
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (New Haven andLondon, 1996), no. 23.
8. This boy serves the same purpose as the sleeping boy who has just eaten a turnip in thecenter foreground of Steen’s Village School in Edinburgh; see H. Perry Chapman, WouterTh. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller , ed. Guido Jansen(Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (New Havenand London, 1996), no. 41. Another possibility is the proverb “Elck is om raepen uyt”
(Everyone is out to steal). See Walter Gibson, Figures of Speech: Picturing Proverbs inRenaissance Netherlands (Berkeley, 2010), 75–77, who discusses a painting with that
inscription by Adriaen van de Venne. The double meaning of rapen (meaning both “turnips”
and “to steal”) is essential to that proverb, and therefore does not seem readily applicable tothe present painting, unless the saying depicted is actually “elkeen probeert zijn aandeel tebemachtigen” (everyone tries to lay his hands on his fair share), in which case it may well beof significance to this work.
9. See Eddy de Jongh, Portretten van echt en trouw: Huwelijk en gezin in de Nederlandse
kunst van de zeventiende eeuw (Zwolle, 1986), 112. See also S. Rietveld, “Schilderij met
zakdoek,” Halszaken 10 (2011): 6–7, no. 30, which discusses Interior with a Wedding Feastby Anthonie Palamedesz. (1601–73) of 1640, in which the mother of the bride, Liesbeth vande Waert, holds a handkerchief that still exists.
10. See Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), nos. 75 and 11; H.
Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter andStoryteller, ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (New Haven and London, 1996), 102, fig. 2, and cat. no 1; andM. Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen: Comic Painting in the SeventeenthCentury (Zwolle, 1997), 144, fig. 10.
11. Pieter Leonard Delfos after Jan Steen, The Fair at Warmond, black chalk on paper, 45.3 x
63.5 cm, Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam. Inscribed on the verso: “De Warmondze Kermis.”
12. The dilapidated state of the nave is also easily discernible in prints by Rademaker and© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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Spilman. Steen did occasionally produce topographically correct depictions, as in hisFair at
Oegstgeest, a painting from the mid-1650s that is now in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The
church in the background of that painting is the so-called Green Church at Oegstgeest. The
detailed rendering of the tower of that church, which was flanked on the south side by asmall chapel, rules out the possibility that the Leiden Collection painting depicts Oegstgeest,
as written on a photograph of the painting in the RKD (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische
Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) in The Hague. The photo had been in thepossession of Dr. Hans Schneider, then director of the RKD (Rijksbureau voor
Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History), who had presumably
been inspired by W. R. Valentiner’s article, “The Fair at Oegstgeest by Jan Steen,”Bulletinof the Detroit Institute of Arts 19 (1940): 66–69.
13. On Ter Weer, see S. J. Fockema Andreae et al., Kastelen, ridderhofsteden enbuitenplaatsen in Rijnland (Leiden, 1952), 93–94. The appearance of the gate is known froma drawing by Roelant Roghman (Roelant Roghman, Ter Weer House, Seen from the
Entrance Gate, ca. 1647, black chalk, gray wash, 290 x 459 mm, present whereabouts
unknown): see H. W. M. van der Wyck and J. W. Niemeijer, De kasteeltekeningen van
Roelant Roghman (Alphen aan den Rijn, 1989), 1:224, no. 205
14. Karel Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no.
1980, no. 373; H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan
Steen, Painter and Storyteller, ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington, National Gallery ofArt; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (New Haven and London, 1996) no. 49. In fact, the profile of
the woman with a child on her lap in the left foreground in the painting discussed here isalmost identical to the woman in the right foreground of Garden Party.
15. This restraint is particularly evident when one considers his earlier fairs, such asFair at theRiver, ca. 1653 (Karel Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen[Rotterdam, 1980], no. 75) and Fair at Oegstgeest from the mid-1650s (Karel Braun, Alle tot
nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen [Rotterdam, 1980], no. 74); see also H. Perry
Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter andStoryteller, ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (New Haven and London, 1996), 176.
16. Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no. 354; see also H. Perry
Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Jan Steen, Painter andStoryteller, ed. Guido Jansen (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (New Haven and London, 1996), no. 46. The execution of thispainting was largely the work of one of Steen’s assistants. Another painting with many
figures is Steen’s Fair with “Neuzenslijper” (Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen[Rotterdam, 1980], no. 366).
17. Cornelis Hofstede de Groot writes: “On the bank of a stream a milkmaid empties her copper© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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jug,” A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of theSeventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith, 8 vols. (London, 1907–27),
1:170–71, no. 652, translated from Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke
der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols. (Esslingen andParis, 1907–28) (“Am Ufer eines Baches leert ein Milchmädchen ihren kupferen Krug”).
There is no overpainting on Delfos’s drawing of 1789. In the 1842 catalogue of the Higginson
collection, the woman is described as holding a milk jug.
18. In the drawing made after the painting, Delfos depicted a stream of urine that is not, or atleast is no longer, seen in the painting. Delfos, too, may have been thinking of Rembrandt
here.
19. Karel Braun, Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no. 165.
20. An analogous case is the painting by Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630),The Visit of Prince
Maurits to the New Stables at Rijswijk of 1624 (Six Collection, Amsterdam), a painting that
contains a large number of recognizable people and a great deal of existing architecture,
though it sometimes falls back on standard formulas from the pictorial tradition of rendering
fairs. See K. Zandvliet, Maurits, Prins van Oranje (Amsterdam, 2000), 311–14. See also M.
Dominicus-van Soest, “De kermis in de beeldende kunst,” in Kennis, kunstjes en kunnen:
Kermis; De wondere wereld van glans en glitter, ed. J. Jacobs (Amsterdam, 2002), 41.
21. For a more detailed discussion of Van Heemskerck as the possible patron, see JS-112.

Provenance
Willem Jacobsz van Heemskerk (1613–92), Leiden, until 1692; by descent to Willem
Willemsz van Heemskerck (1648–95), Leiden, until 1695; by descent to Johanna van
Sorgen (1646–1729), Leiden, until 1729; by descent to Leonard van Heemskerk(1689–1771), Leiden, until 1771 (his sale, Leiden, Delfos, 2 September 1771, no. 9 [for 525
guilders to Hieronimus David Gaubius]).
Hieronimus David Gaubius (d. 1780), Leiden, until 1780; by descent to Constantia Gaubius(d. 1782), Leiden, until 1782; by descent to Maria Amalia Gaubius (1744–88) and Hendrick
Twent (1743–88), Leiden, until 1789 (his sale, Leiden, Delfos, 11 August 1789, no. 28 [for300 guilders to either A. P. or H. J. Delfos]).
Chaplin, London, by 1836.
Edmund Higginson, Esq., Saltmarsh Castle, Herefordshire, purchased on his behalf by W.
Artaria by 1842 (his sale, London, Christie’s, 4 June 1846, no. 159 [for £210 to Chaplin]).
Chaplin, London, by 1846.
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Robert Field, London (his sale, Christie and Manson, London, 3–6 June 1856, no. 525 [for£106]).
(Anonymous sale, London, 1864, no. 20, bought in).
C. J. Nieuwenhuys, Brussels (his sale, Brussels, Le Roy, 4 May 1883, no. 19).
Charles T. Yerkes (1837–1905), New York (his sale, New York, American Art Association,
Mendelssohn Hall, 5–8 April 1910, no. 140 [to E. Brandus]).
E. Brandus, New York, by 1910.
John W. Gates, New York.
[F. Kleinberger & Cie, Paris, by 1921].
Angell-Norris Collection, Chicago, by 1923; by descent to Lavern Norris Gaynor by 1981; bywhom given to Northwestern University, Chicago; from whom acquired by Elizabeth Lindsay
Corbett.
Elizabeth Lindsay Corbett, by 1989 (sale, Christie’s, New York, 31 May 1989, no. 124,
unsold; sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 28 January 1999, no. 231, unsold; sale, Sotheby’s,London, 5 July 2006, no. 29; [Johnny van Haeften Ltd., London]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2006.

Exhibition History
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, “Paintings from the Collection of R. F. Angell, Mr. andMrs. William Cresner, Mr. and Mrs. Max Epstein, Martin A. Ryerson,” Summer–Fall 1923
[lent by the Angell-Norris Collection].
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, long-term loan, May 1923–January 1965 [lent by theAngell-Norris Collection].
Chicago, The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, “Know What You See,” 6
October–7 November 1970 [lent by the Angell-Norris Collection].
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, November 2009–September 2010, temporary
loan [lent by the present owner].
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, “Celebrating in the Golden Age,” 11 November 2011–6 May
2012, no. 8 [lent by the present owner].
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, May
2012–May 2015 [lent by the present owner].
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, “Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt
and Vermeer,” 11 October 2015–18 January 2016; Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum, 24
February–29 May 2016, no. 67 [lent by the present owner].
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Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The
Leiden Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].

References
Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish andFrench Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829–42, 9:496–97, no. 59.
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Gallery of Pictures Collected by Edmund Higginson, Esq. Of
Saltmarshe. London, 1842, 66, no. 20.
Van Westrheene, T. Jan Steen: Étude sur L’Art en Hollande. La Haye, 1856, no. 94
Van Westrheene, T. Jan Steen: Historische-romantische Schetsen. Leiden, 1864, 125–26.
Bredius, Abraham. Jan Steen: Met honderd platen bevattende 101 afbeeldingen in
photogravure van zijne beste werken. Amsterdam, n.d., no. 56.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelius. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent
Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith . 8 vols.
London, 1907–27, 1:170–71, no. 652. Translated from Beschreibendes und kritisches
Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts.
10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
W. A. P. “The Angell Collection.” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 17, no. 6 (September
1923): 50–53.
A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago . Chicago,
1925; rev. ed., 1932, 190.
Braun, Karel. Alle schilderijen van Jan Steen. Rotterdam, 1980, 119, no. 239.
Hillegers, Jasper. “The Fair at Warmond.” In Celebrating in the Golden Age. Edited by Anna
Tummers. Exh. cat. Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum. Rotterdam, 2011, 68–69, no. 8.
Baer, Ronni, with Henk F. K. van Nierop, Herman Roodenburg, Eric Jan Sluijter, Marieke deWinkel, Sanny de Zoete, and Diane Webb. Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of
Rembrandt and Vermeer. Exh. cat. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; Kansas City, NelsonAtkins Museum. New York, 2015, 18–19, 249, 255, 258, no. 67.

Versions
Drawing© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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Warmond”)
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1. Pieter Leonard Delfos after Jan Steen, The Fair at Warmond, black chalk on paper, 45.3 x
63.5 cm. On the verso annotated ‘De Warmondze Kermis.’

Versions Notes

Technical Summary
The support, a single piece of medium weight, plain-weave fabric, has been lined. All fourtacking margins have been almost entirely removed, although a remnant of primed canvas along
the upper edge remains. Broad cusping along the upper and lower edges and slight cuspingalong the vertical edges indicates that the support dimensions have not been significantly
altered. There is one paper label and two numerical inscriptions, but no wax seals, importstamps or stencils along the lining or stretcher.
A dark red-brown ground has been thinly and evenly applied. The oil paint has been thinly
applied allowing the canvas weave to remain visible across much of the surface. Low ridges ofimpasto and soft brushmarks indicate a paint mixture rich in medium or diluted to the point thatthe paint flowed and leveled as it came off the brush. Pentimenti indicate changes in positions of
the dog and the figure’s leg along the far right holding the bird cage, and a possible adjustment in
the area of the extended arm of the woman at the lower left holding a baby.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. Two
minor compositional changes visible in the images heighten the gaiety of the scene. Originally,
the man on the right of the encircled dancers had his head bowed forward rather than thrown
back, with an open mouth conveying exuberance; additionally the blond girl being appraised by
the man with his back turned to the viewer at the center of the composition had a less revealing
décolletage.
The painting is signed in dark paint along the lower center but undated.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition in 2007 and remains
in a good state of preservation.[1]Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Entry based on a 2011 examination report by Terry Lignelli, associate paintings
conservator, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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Peasants Merrymaking Outside an Inn (Previously “Fair at
Warmond”)
Page 13 of 13© 2017 The Leiden Collection