Copy after Plate 6 from The Peasants' Festival and Twelve Months.

Sebald Beham (popularly called Hans Sebald Beham) (1500-1550) was a prolific early Renaissance German printmaker. Born in Nuremberg and therefore a fellow citizen of Albrecht Dürer, he spent the second half of his career in Frankfurt and was a supporter of the Protestant Reformation. He was one of the most important of the so-called 'Little Masters' (Henrich Aldegrever was another), the group of German printmakers initially inspired by Dürer, who continued to flourish into the mid-16th century. The intimate scale of their works, rather than these impressive artists being overshadowed by the brilliant Dürer, explains their name.

Beham produced approximately 252 engravings, 18 etchings and 1500 woodcuts, including woodcut book illustrations. He worked extensively on tiny, highly detailed, engravings, many as small as postage stamps, which he printed and published himself, while his much larger woodcuts were mostly commissioned work. The engravings found a ready market among German collectors. He also made prints for use as playing cards and wallpaper. His engravings cover a range of subjects, but he is especially known for scenes of peasant life as here, and scenes from classical myths or history, both often with an erotic element.

This print, and plate 3, also in Te Papa's collection, are both copies from a series of ten engravings numbered consecutively in the plates and depicting a series of thirteen dancing couples and two musicians followed by a feast, a fight and other scenes associated with the feast. The first twelve dancing couples are depictions of the months. The series was intended to be displayed as a frieze, with parts of figures, such as heels or skirts, stretching across two plates. The first six prints of the series show two dancing couples each, named after the months of the year; the seventh represents the year's end, and the last three show scenes of drinking, fighting and lovemaking. Many of the figures are copied from Beham's earlier engraved Peasant Festival (1537), where the plates showed one dancing couple each without any inscriptions.  These figures, in turn, are adapted from the woodcut of  Church Festival at Mögeldorf (c. 1528), attributed to Sebald's brother, Barthel Beham, and Erhard Schön. Sebald Beham made numerous series of engravings of peasant activities, some of which he repeated.

As with Beham's large woodcuts of similar scenes, much discussion in recent years has centred around the extent to which these prints should be viewed as a celebration of contemporary peasant customs, or whether the satirical tone reflected a moralising attitude which was current in this period of religious and social reform. Although perceptions of satire alter with time, it is possible that a combination of both factors is represented in these prints and that the ambiguity contributed to their undeniable success. The vomiting, graphically depicted here, indicates that in this plate at least, satire rather than celebration was the order of the day. To judge from the numbers of copies of this series of engravings, in a variety of media, their popularity was considerable.

(Adapted from notes of 2007 by Mathew Norman)

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebald_Beham

Dr Mark Stocker     Curator, Historical International Art                            January 2017