A Satyr and Peasants

A Satyr and Peasants, now at Fairfax House in York, adapts the ancient Aesopian fable — also known from Fontaine — in which a satyr invites a peasant to dine, then expels him when the man blows on his hands to warm them and on his soup to cool it. The satyr cannot understand how the same breath can perform opposite functions and concludes that a creature capable of such duplicity cannot be trusted. Jordaens returned to this moralising fable many times throughout his career, finding in it an ideal vehicle for his preferred combination of mythological setting and Flemish peasant life. The satyr — shaggy, half-animal, direct — provides comic contrast to the calculating human. Fairfax House, a Georgian mansion in York now serving as a museum, holds European old masters collected by aristocratic families who furnished such country houses during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The painting's placement in a northern English country house reflects the widespread appetite for Flemish Baroque among British collectors.

The composition is typically intimate for this subject, placing satyr and peasant family in close proximity within a shallow interior space. Jordaens differentiates the satyr's rough, animal pelt from the woollen clothing of the human family through contrasting paint application — short, dense strokes for fur, longer and smoother handling for fabric. A candle or fire light source creates the warm chiaroscuro that ties the scene together.