Notes on the Brueghel Exhibition, 1943–44

Abstract

THE exhibition of paintings by the Brueghels and their school which was held in the Eugene Slatter Gallery, Bond Street, last winter, has a great deal to say to folklorists, dancers and musicians as well as to artists. Certain of Brueghel's dancing figures have become stock illustrations in histories of dance, but these are nearly always lifted from their surroundings so that inferences as to occasions, and reasons for their dancing are impossible. They are, for the most part, but a part of scenes rich in folk custom, and study of their environment and the figures about them is of the first importance. No. I in the catalogue. The celebrated Kermesse at Hoboken by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, dated 1559, a pen drawing with bistre tints, shows a Ring dance, at that date probably a Carole, round two children sitting in its centre. I do not think these children have any ritual or choreographic significance. They may have been put there for safety by their parents who wanted to dance. Just so have I seen small children inside a Sardana ring. Two musicians play their bagpipes for the dance, while in another part of the crowded fair-ground one couple dances a pair dance outside the inn. The village Fool in a cap with ears, kindly leads two children by the hand. This constantly recurring village Fool, so closely allied in dress to the Court Fool, is a most interesting figure. No. 2. In the catalogue this is called Celebration of St. George's Day, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. He worked between about 1580 and 1638. This is the famous picture showing a Sword dance, St. George and the Dragon, and a Country dance, all going on in the same village on the local Patronal feast. I do not think it is St. George's Day for the trees are in full leaf, which would be unseasonable, to say the least of it, in a village in Flanders. But there is no need to confine St. George's appearance to his own festival. Does he not come out at Midwinter in our own Mummers' plays? He is much in favour to-day at town and village feasts in the Netherlands and Belgium, appearing at the patronal festivals and at Carnival, in company with the Dragon and many small hobby horses, as well as with the giant hobby horse, Bayard, whose long back accommodates the Quatre Fils d'Aymon. The ecclesiastical procession ambulating the churchyard in the background of the picture, shows men bearing chasses on each of which is a statue. The first one is that of a Bishop, probably the Patron Saint of the village and certainly not St. George. This picture has been used for an explanation of the Baccubert Sword dance of Dauphin6 by a local enthusiast, who, knowing no other possibility, imagined that Pieter Brueghel on his travels had passed through the tiny hamlet of Pont de Cervibres-though it is quite off any ordinarily used route to Italy-and had been so struck with the Sword dance that he introduced this French-Alpine rite into his Flemish village scene. Such a proceeding was about as alien to a Brueghel homely and tradi-