Cornelis Dusart (Haarlem 1660-1704)

We are grateful to Dr. Berhard Schnackenburg for confirming the attribution of this picture to Cornelis Dusart on the basis of photographs. He has noted that it is a relatively early work, probably executed around or before 1680. Dusart became a member of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke on 10 January 1679, and his pictures around this time were very much influenced by those of his teacher, Adriaen van Ostade, whose studio contents he inherited in 1685 (see, for example, Peasants outside an Inn, Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum). Distinctive differences between the two artists include Dusart's more delicate treatment of foliage, and his intense use of colour. As Schnackenburg has noted, this depiction of a village street with a fiddler and a hurdy-gurdy player before an inn is typical of the artist in 'the technique and scale, the figure types, the rendering of the trees and colours'.