The Dancing Couple

The Dancing Couple is an oil-on-canvas painting that was created by Jan Steen in 1663. It depicts a boisterous party with a dancing couple in the center. This painting is part of the Widener Collection, which currently resides in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The setting of the painting is a kermis, which is a local village fair that several Dutch artworks referenced. Kermises were extremely popular in the Bruegel tradition. The Dancing Couple was one of the few paintings which started a new era in Dutch art. Paintings like these depicts a setting which was inspired by the rural working class of the Dutch people. This was a significant change for Dutch art as these settings highlighted a thriving period in their history. A new perspective was shown which changed the way traditional Dutch art was looked at as they focused more on the realistic rural working lifestyle and values of the Dutch people.