Customers Conversing in a Tavern

Van Ostade signed and dated this panel in 1671, and its later history runs through the paperwork of the Second World War. In the 1930s it was in the stock of Paul Graupe, a Jewish art dealer with a gallery in Paris. When Graupe fled France he asked his associate Arthur Goldschmidt to save whatever could be saved, and in February 1941 Goldschmidt sold the Ostade to Karl Haberstock, a Berlin dealer who bought for Hitler. It was set aside for the museum Hitler planned for Linz, recovered by the Allies in 1945 and sent back to France. When no one claimed it, the French state sold it at auction in 1951. In 1992 the Boston collectors Susan and Matthew Weatherbie bought it, and in 2023, after six years of research and negotiation, they reached a settlement with the heirs of both dealers and kept the picture. Inside the tavern, a man in a brown coat leans in over two seated drinkers, one lifting a small glass, the other holding a long clay pipe, while at the back a woman works by the window. The panel hangs in Boston as the Weatherbies' promised gift to the museum.