Blossom

The trees and flower beds in Hare Hill Park were looking great this morning.

My first listen today was to the album "Painful" (NB it isn't) by New York band Yo La Tengo. I gather that the name means "I've got it" or "I have her." My favourite track is Double Dare.

Today's painting is by Dutch painter Jacob Jordaens in 1640/45 and is called "The King's Feast" - or at least it might be.  Jordaens painted about ten works showing this scene and others like it.  This one may be properly called "The Feast of the Bean King." Like others by Northern European artists at the time, rather than choosing religious or classic subjects, Jordaens depicts a scene of ordinary people.

The party in question is taking place on Twelfth Night, when it was common for lengthy, drunken feasts to take place. In this painting, not much food is left but there still seems to be plenty of booze. The "King" in question is not actual royalty but probably just the oldest person present. Sometimes at such events the King, Queen and other "roles" would be drawn by lots by the party goers.

The scene is within Jordaens' own house in Antwerp. The city had been a highly prosperous port but that was damaged by the Thirty Years War.  By the 1640s, it had fallen on very hard times. Jordaens paints a mundane event in a rich, Baroque style, similar to that of Rubens. The sweeping gestures are too large for the small room and the mirthful expressions on the drinkers' faces seem glazed and forced. Perhaps this is an ironic view of how "great" life was in that city at that time.