Adriaen van Ostade

Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Le Pain et le Vin, 1954, no. 160.

A pupil of Frans Hals and Adriaen Brouwer, Van Ostade adopted the latter’s manner, preferring to illustrate the lives of his contemporaries in benign scenes painted with great humanity, following in the tradition of works by the Brueghels, whose compositions were widely circulated in Netherlands during the seventeenth century.

Van Ostade became a member of the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem in 1634, when he was already establishing himself as a painter of the peasant world, depicting brawls and romances in taverns and cottages. The present painting is a good example: the composition centred on an open window reveals a drinker in the foreground, holding a full glass in one hand and an apparently empty carafe in the other. Other merry figures are crowded behind him, including a musician holding his fiddle. One of the artist’s favourite subjects, it is difficult to identify clearly among the numerous compositions mentioned by Hofstede de Groot.

As was his wont, Van Ostade observes these figures with an eye that is amused, humane and indulgent. No judgement or disapproval trouble this simple and evocative moment of joy.