Country Dances Round a Maypole

Francis Hayman's Country Dances Round a Maypole, the third of his Vauxhall Gardens series being considered here, celebrates the most iconic of English seasonal festivities, one that had been contested between puritanical reform movements and cultural traditionalists since the seventeenth century. By the 1740s, the Maypole had become a symbol of a specifically English pastoral culture under pressure from urbanization and Methodist piety, and Hayman's affectionate treatment affirms its value within the programme of popular culture celebration that the Vauxhall series constituted. The dancing figures around the Maypole offer Hayman scope for varied figure composition and the depiction of communal joy, and the rural setting provides a pastoral counterpoint to the urban street scenes in other panels. Together, Hayman's Vauxhall decorations constitute a remarkably coherent visual statement about English popular culture in the mid-eighteenth century.

The Maypole provides a strong vertical axis around which the dancing figures are arranged in a circular pattern that creates visual rhythm. Hayman's figures are drawn with fluent energy, each dancer individualized within the group movement. The palette is fresh and summery, appropriate to a May Day celebration, with the country landscape providing a pastoral green backdrop.