Village Fête (Claude Lorrain)

La Fête villageoise) is an oil-on-canvas painting of a village fête by the French Baroque painter Claude Lorrain (real name Claude Gellée), painted in 1639 and given to Louis XIV in 1693 together with its companion Seaport at Sunset, by the landscape architect and gardener André Le Nôtre.

Claude's Liber Veritatis, a register in which he recorded and drew the paintings he had done, has a note on the back of the drawing for the Fête (No.

Another copy is in the possession of Lord Yarborough in England (called Landscape with Rural Dance), and yet another was in the Stroganov collection, St. Petersburg.

The composition, with a group of trees in the centre, and openings on either side through which the light appears, was often used by Flemish landscape painters from the time of Bruegel: Paul and Matthew Bril frequently employed it, and Lorrain continued in their tradition in Rome.

Through the opening on the right can be seen a city bathed in a golden mist, more characteristic of the campagna romana (Roman countryside) than of the North.

Landscape with Rural Dance , c. 1637
The Seaport at Sunset by Lorrain, at the National Gallery , London (1639)