A peasant eating mussels at a farm, with a woman at a well and a man with his dog, a landscape with a church beyond

This composition is markedly similar to one employed by Teniers for the Peasant Family before their House in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - a picture dated by Margret Klinge to the first half of the 1650s (see M. Klinge, catalogue of the exhibition, David Teniers the Younger, Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1991, p. 232, no. 80). The use of strong colour in the figures, the rapid treatment of the brown buildings and the sunlit landscape are common in both pictures. The peasants in the Rijksmuseum canvas are shown with an abundance of household goods and vegetables taken by Klinge to denote rural well-being borne out of hard work in the fields beyond. The same cannot be said for the present picture in which the peasants, although well dressed, are shown in more spartan surroundings and curiously do not inter-relate in any way. The significance of the owl perched prominently on the cottage fence is not clear.