“Village fair” by Constantin Fidèle Coene

Beautiful village scene with groups of people dancing and drinking. Fine detailed painting technique characteristic for the artist and the period. Oil on panel signed lower right. In great condition.

Size: H 34 cm x W 42 cm – H 48 cm x W 55 cm

Flemish school of the first part of the 19th century.

Lit: Constantin Coene is a genre and history painter, engraver and lithograph. Student of H. van Assche and F. Faber in Brussels and of B.P. Barbiers in Amsterdam. He becomes a professor at the Brussels Academy in 1820. His painting of the Battle of Waterloo is acquired by the Prince of Wales, future King Georges IV. He is a master of the genre scene. The Royal Fine Arts museum of Belgium owns a fantastic scene of the Belgian Revolution. Another masterpiece “A collision at the Halle Gate in Brussels (alcohol trafficking)” is in the Rijksmuseum collection. Other works in the Army and military Museum.

Lit: The foundations of genre painting in Europe were laid most remarkably by the great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525/30–1569) in the sixteenth century. Bruegel’s inhabited landscapes and scenes of peasant life are lively and unsentimental depictions of common occurrence, such as weddings and village fairs. Often pointedly critical of human folly, as in works illustrating ever-popular proverbs and moral sayings, Bruegel’s oeuvre had great appeal to collectors and great influence on later artists, who prized his observational powers, humanistic approach, and the “lesson” or witty commentary often contained in his works. (extract from the article “Genre Painting in Northern Europe”, Jennifer Meagher, Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008)