拍品专文
Ostade was one of the foremost genre painters of seventeenth-century Holland, recorded as having started his career as a pupil of Frans Hals in Haarlem, concurrently with Adriaen Brouwer. Following Brouwer's influence, in his early work Ostade adopted a satirical, almost caricatured, manner in his painting, but from the 1640s onwards he began to endow his low-life protagonists with increasing degrees of restraint and dignity, his palette becoming richer and his detail more precise.
This unusually large-scale panel epitomizes Ostade’s approach to interior scenes in the 1630s. Several groups of carefree revellers carouse, embrace, sing, make music and dance within the rustic confines of a ramshackle inn. The painting’s jaunty atmosphere is untrammelled by peasants pulling knives, brawling or engaging in other types of (mis)behaviour that so frequently characterise Ostade’s early work. An untended young boy seated at the centre of the painting strikes the only obvious note of caution to an otherwise ebullient scene. With his slouched posture, splayed legs and the humble gruel that he picks at with his hands, from a tender age he affects the stereotypes that in the seventeenth century were believed to be hallmarks of the ‘uncivilised’ masses. Nor is it clear who exactly is charged with his upbringing, the two likeliest candidates being the two young couples amorously locking lips.
By the mid-nineteenth century, this painting was in the collection of the Earls Fitzwilliam at Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire (fig. 1), in whose collection it remained until it was sold in these Rooms at the end of the last century. The collection also included works by Claude and Sir Anthony van Dyck as well as paintings that in earlier times bore attributions to the likes of Raphael and Titian.
This unusually large-scale panel epitomizes Ostade’s approach to interior scenes in the 1630s. Several groups of carefree revellers carouse, embrace, sing, make music and dance within the rustic confines of a ramshackle inn. The painting’s jaunty atmosphere is untrammelled by peasants pulling knives, brawling or engaging in other types of (mis)behaviour that so frequently characterise Ostade’s early work. An untended young boy seated at the centre of the painting strikes the only obvious note of caution to an otherwise ebullient scene. With his slouched posture, splayed legs and the humble gruel that he picks at with his hands, from a tender age he affects the stereotypes that in the seventeenth century were believed to be hallmarks of the ‘uncivilised’ masses. Nor is it clear who exactly is charged with his upbringing, the two likeliest candidates being the two young couples amorously locking lips.
By the mid-nineteenth century, this painting was in the collection of the Earls Fitzwilliam at Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire (fig. 1), in whose collection it remained until it was sold in these Rooms at the end of the last century. The collection also included works by Claude and Sir Anthony van Dyck as well as paintings that in earlier times bore attributions to the likes of Raphael and Titian.