Adriaen van Ostade

Adriaen van Ostade spent his whole working life in Haarlem painting the Dutch poor at their rowdiest. His small pictures crowd into smoky taverns and cramped cottages where peasants drink, brawl, dance, sing and play cards by lamplight, faces flushed and mouths open.

He may have trained alongside the young Adriaen Brouwer in the workshop of Frans Hals, and he took that taste for low-life comedy and softened it over the years into something warmer and more golden-toned. Later he even lent his villagers a certain cosy dignity, a family saying grace, an artist quietly at work.

Van Ostade was prolific, turning out hundreds of paintings and etchings, and prosperous enough to serve as an officer of the Haarlem painters' guild. He kept at his tavern scenes until his death in the city in 1685.