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# Oh Shit! British Royal Collection Finds Pooper Hidden in 17th-Century Painting
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/oh-shit-british-royal-collection-finds-pooper-hidden-in-17th-century-painting/
- Published: 2015-11-06T19:27:14.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:42:53.000Z
- Description: It turns out that Isack van Ostade’s “A Village Fair With a Church Behind” (1643) — as the painting was perhaps cheekily titled — shows a man with his pants down relieving himself in the middle of a busy street.
- Author: Laura C. Mallonee
- Tags: In Brief, Painting, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:13 (2014, 2015, part 3)

!["A Village Fair, With a Church Behind" before conservation (Image courtesy Royal Collection Trust) ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/11/407234-van-ostade-a-village-fair-before-treatment.jpg)

Isack van Ostade’s “A Village Fair, With a Church Behind” before conservation (all images courtesy Royal Collection Trust)

Conservators in England have uncovered 17th-century potty humor in a painting owned by the Royal Family, [S](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hidden-poop-joke-queen-elizabeth-painting-180957156/?no-ist&ref=hyperallergic.com)[mithsonian.com ](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hidden-poop-joke-queen-elizabeth-painting-180957156/?no-ist&ref=hyperallergic.com)[reports](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hidden-poop-joke-queen-elizabeth-painting-180957156/?no-ist&ref=hyperallergic.com). It turns out that Isack van Ostade’s “[A Village Fair With a Church Behind](https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/407234/a-village-fair-with-a-church-behind?ref=hyperallergic.com)” (1643) — as the painting was perhaps cheekily titled — shows a man with his pants down relieving himself in the middle of a busy street.

Staff at the [Royal Collection Trust](https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/?ref=hyperallergic.com) discovered this “surprising element,” as they called it, while cleaning the painting ahead of an upcoming exhibition at the [Queen’s Gallery](https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/exhibitions/masters-of-the-everyday-dutch-artists-in-the-age-of-vermeer?ref=hyperallergic.com). They realized that a bush in the right foreground wasn’t original to the painting but had been added in 1903\. As they started removing it, the squatting peasant appeared. 

![Detail of "A Village Fair, With a Church Behind" (Image courtesy Royal Collection Trust) ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/11/detail-squatting-man-.jpg)

Detail of Isack van Ostade’s “A Village Fair, With a Church Behind”

The 16th- and 17th-century Dutch painters seemed to enjoy inserting exposed buttocks into their paintings. They appear in Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” (c. 1500), Brueghel the Younger’s “[Winter Landscape](https://www.rijksmuseumtwenthe.nl/content/295?lang=en%5FUS&ref=hyperallergic.com)” (1564), and Brueghel the Elder’s “[Netherlandish Roverbs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlandish%5FProverbs?ref=hyperallergic.com)” (1559). “Dutch artists often include people or animals answering the call of nature partly as a joke and partly to remind viewers of that crucial word ‘nature,’ the inspiration for their art,” said Desmond Shawe-Taylor, surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures collection, in a [statement](https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/press-release/conservation-ahead-of-new-exhibition-reveals-surprising-element-to-painting?ref=hyperallergic.com).

Jokes about poop and pee have also been a staple of British comedy since Geoffrey Chaucer published *The Canterbury Tales* in 1475\. William Shakespeare routinely made fart jokes in works like *The Comedy of Errors*, and George IV seemed to have no problem with it when he purchased “A Village Fair” in 1810.

But during the more repressed — let’s say it, constipated — Edwardian era, toilet humor may have been less welcome. “Queen Victoria thought the Dutch pictures in her collection were painted in a ‘low style,’” Shawe-Taylor said. “\[Two\] years after her death perhaps a royal advisor felt similar.”

Whatever the case, the new finding suggests there might yet be more rear ends to be exposed in the Royal Family’s collection. Conservators found one in a tavern sign in Jan Steen’s “[A Village Revel](https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/405611/a-village-revel?ref=hyperallergic.com)” (1673), also acquired by George IV. A bull’s head had been painted over it.

!["A Village Fair, With a Church Behind," after conservation (Image courtesy Royal Collection Trust) ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/11/407234-van-ostade-a-village-fair-after.jpg)

“A Village Fair, With a Church Behind,” after conservation, with the squatter in the lower righthand corner (click to enlarge)