The Fête Champêtre

Dirck Hals signed and dated this panel D HALS 1627, but the inscription at centre left can no longer be read with the naked eye. It shows up only in infrared reflectography. On the surface is a party in the grounds of a country house. Couples flirt at the edges, a lute player and a woman with a flute sit among the guests at the left, and a long table is laid in the middle. A parrot and a peacock perch on a pedestal, and in the right foreground bottles cool in a large basin. The museum suggests that viewers in the 1620s would have enjoyed the spectacle and also caught its warning, that life holds more than eating, drinking and merrymaking. The clue sits in the foreground, a small monkey on a chain, standing for people held captive by their appetites.