FLEMISH SCHOOL. oooo00000000 KUBENS. oooooooooo FRENCH MUSEUM

A KERMIS.

In every village, at the patronal anniversary day, people usually come in crowds from the environs: and this meeting, which, in the neighbourhood of Paris is called La Fête du Pays, or The Country feast; in Normandy, the Assembly; in Flanders, bears the name of Kermis. Rubens, in representing a subject of this nature, has shown us a crowd of peasants giving themselves up to broad and free merriment, to their taste for drinking, to the pleasures of dancing, or rather jumping, and even yielding to drunkenness, formerly so usual in popular rejoicings.

The scene takes place before an ale house; the cravings of hunger are already satisfied; but the actors are here endeavouring to prolong drinking pleasures. The peasants, divided in groups, are sitting on the ground, they are giving themselves up to noisy and rough games, by which they try to awaken amorous feelings. The women appear to have some trouble in resisting the rude and violent attacks of their antagonists. Minstrels, placed under a tree, make the air echo with rustic music, which, joined to the noise of the drinkers and the free burdens of the songs, provokes and revives the senses. It is more particularly in the groups of the dancers that the artist's intention is discernible: the postures and motions depict the boldness, the buoyancy, and the spirit that animate all the personages. The attitudes, the entwinings, are so well expressed in the figures, that they are seen bounding and enjoying all which gaiety, pleasure and intoxication can inspire of most energetical and most passionate.

This picture is in the Louvre Gallery: it has been engraved by Fessard.

Width, 7 feet 6 inches; height, 4 feet 6 inches.