Today’s work of art is another painted by David Teniers the Younger, a Flemish artist born in Antwerp. The painting is known as Peasants Dancing Outside an Inn. The painting is in the Royal Collection at Windsor, which I believe means the Queen of England owns it. It was completed around 1645, although the Royal Collection lists the date as 1641.

The Web Gallery of Art describes the painting:

The painting, which would appear to date from the mid- or late 1640s, is essentially a genre scene of a type that had been pioneered by painters like Jan Brueghel the Elder, Frans Francken II and David Vinckboons. The broad characterisation of peasant types by Teniers is to some extent derived from Adriaen Brouwer, but the squat proportions of the figures, with their large heads and big feet, are typical of the artist’s style. Not all the figures, however, are peasants. The couple in the left foreground, accompanied by a child and a dog, are bourgeois types. So too is the woman nearby being helped to her feet. Dress and coiffure suggest social distinctions that may give the painting extra meaning.

The inn in the left half of the composition occurs again in a painting in Dresden, but the general layout of the composition with buildings on the left, a tree with or without a fence marking the centre, and a distant view on the right is a well-established format in Teniers’s work. Otherwise it is the range of observation and contrasting actions that holds the attention. The bagpiper leaning against the tree, the man vomiting, the man near the centre leaning on his stick, the dancers, the woman looking out of the window of the inn are all memorable figures in a painting of varied emotions and changing rhythms. The figure helping the woman to her feet anticipates Watteau, who was a keen admirer of Teniers. Genre, landscape and still life are all combined in this composition, which provides abundant proof of the artist’s skills.

The second painting of the same Inn they’re referring to appears to have been done around 1660 and is also titled Peasants Dancing Outside an Inn, though it’s often referred to as Peasants Dancing Outside An Inn II

To learn more about David Teniers, Wikipedia has a good overview and there’s also a more detailed biography at the National Gallery and the Web Gallery of Art. You can see more of his work at the Web Museum, Olga’s Gallery and the National Gallery. There are also additional links at ArtCyclopedia