Pieter Brueghel II (Brussels 1564/5-1637/8 Antwerp)

The composition, described by Marlier as 'one of the most popular of all subjects in Flemish painting at the beginning of the seventeenth century', is one of a group by Brueghel representing different episodes during a wedding day, generally regarded as amongst the high points of the artist's oeuvre. The group's popularity can be understood through its combination of landscape and genre with Brueghel's familiar pathos-imbued depiction of bawdiness in seventeenth-century Flemish life. Like many of Pieter II's works, these are part of a tradition largely established by his father, Pieter Bruegel I - most notably the famous Wedding Banquet in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

The present composition derives from another, probably lost, drawing or painting by Pieter Bruegel I, known from an engraving by Pieter van der Heyden that was published by Hieronymus Cock; a derivation from the same source is also known by Jan Brueghel I (Bordeaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts). The earliest known paintings of this subject by Pieter II are those in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, and the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, both of which are signed and dated 1607; other versions are known with dates continuing until 1626.

Pieter II's works of this type can be divided into two groups: those painted in the same sense as Van der Heyden's engraving, and those in reverse. The present picture, together with the majority of autograph versions, belongs to the latter group, believed to derive directly from his father's lost work rather than from the engraving.