Snuffbox with six scenes of country pastimes 1774–75 Box by Pierre François Drais French There are six marks on the oval box, including the Paris mark for 1774–75, and the mark of Pierre-François Drais, a master in 1763, working to 1788. The top shows a delicate fête champêtre, signed and dated (at the bottom) van Blarenberghe / 1744: attended by revelers, a peasant couple, a young man with a violin and a young woman gathering flowers in her overskirt, stand in a country landscape under overarching trees hung with garlands of flowers and caged birds. The composition is elegantly shaped to fit
Snuffbox with six scenes of country pastimes 1774–75 Box by Pierre François Drais French There are six marks on the oval box, including the Paris mark for 1774–75, and the mark of Pierre-François Drais, a master in 1763, working to 1788. The top shows a delicate fête champêtre, signed and dated (at the bottom) van Blarenberghe / 1744: attended by revelers, a peasant couple, a young man with a violin and a young woman gathering flowers in her overskirt, stand in a country landscape under overarching trees hung with garlands of flowers and caged birds. The composition is elegantly shaped to fit the field. The scenes around the sides of the box are An Archery Match, A Youth Spurting Water from a Fountain, A Round Dance, and Couples on a object has no recorded history prior to the death in 1914 of Pierpont Morgan, and since then, the vignette on the base has been described as a country fair near a château. It seems likely that the miniature represents The Fair at Bezons, which was painted by Pater and Lancret and had been the subject of the reception piece submitted in 1725 to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture by François Octavien. In the foreground at the left, a happy crowd takes refreshment outside a victualler's tent. Behind this group, visitors arrive and depart in wagons, one horseback, and on foot along a diagonal path lined with booths, and still further back is a village with a church and several large buildings, and the wall and gate of an estate. At the right, a crier draws the interest of the passing crowd to an elaborate outdoor stage where Harlequin raises his bat and Pierrot engages the attentions of a Snuffbox with six scenes of country pastimes. Miniatures by Louis Nicolas van Blarenberghe (French, Lille 1716–1794 Fontainebleau). French, Paris. 1774–75. Gold, glass; miniatures: gouache on vellum
Size: 4000px × 2894px
Photo credit: © MET/BOT / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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