This is a detail from an oil painting, known as 'Village Dance' or 'Lowland Wedding', attributed to Dutch painter Emanuel De Witte (1617-92). It shows music and dancing at a celebration, probably a wedding, in a rural community.
The detail, from the right of the painting, shows a woman trying to break up a fight between two boys. Behind is a pregnant woman being touched by two men.
This type of painting was part of a European fashion for illustrating and sometimes parodying rural life. It gives a rare glimpse of those who served, and were dependent on, the nobility and landowners in 17th-century Scotland.
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