Outdoor Merriment with Dance

Around 1740, collectors still wanted Netherlandish paintings of the century before, with their merry companies and garden parties. There were never enough to go round, and the Belvedere notes that painters like Janneck filled the gap with pictures of the same kind, which sold very well. At the centre of this one an elegant young couple dances hand in hand. She lifts her skirt, he holds his plumed hat low. At the side a violinist plays, with a second musician bent over a larger bowed instrument. Other couples talk and flirt under the trees, while men sit with their glasses at a table. The museum points out that nothing tells us what, if anything, is being celebrated. A small greyhound with a blue collar lies in the foreground, a little apart from the dancers.