A maidservant seated by a fireplace in a kitchen

Quiringh van Brekelenkam was long thought to have been a student of the celebrated Leiden fijsnschilder (‘fine painter’) Gerrit Dou. This assumption has more recently been questioned by scholars, however, as it was based only on a brief entry by an anonymous 18^th-century biographer (for more on Brekelenkam’s early biography see A. Lasius, Quiringh van Brekelenkam, Doornspijk, 1992, pp. 10-11). Although there are no records detailing Brekelenkam’s training, his paintings are closely related to that of the fijsnschilder, especially in subject matter, often depicting market stalls, inn scenes and domestic interiors, as in the present painting. Brekelenkam was a prolific painter, evidenced by the several hundred extant genre scenes, favoring depictions of craftspeople and workshops, perhaps inspired by his own upbringing in a tailor’s workshop.