Family Portrait in an Interior

For a long time this was taken for the painter's own family. When the dealer Paillet bought it in Holland for Louis XVI in 1785, it came as Adriaen van Ostade and his family, and it was shown under that name when the Louvre first opened as a public museum in 1793. The Louvre now treats the story as a selling point added in the late 18th century, and the Dutch scholar Hofstede de Groot rejected it long ago. Who these people really were is not known.

What the room says about them is clearer. Carnations lie scattered across the floorboards, a flower of love between parents and children. On the wall at the left hangs a painting by Nicolaus Knüpfer, a painter working in Utrecht, of Christ letting the little children come to him, and carved cupids file along the lintel of the great fireplace at the right. That fireplace, unused in the warm months, holds a tall vase of flowers, as Dutch households liked to dress it in summer.

The signature and date, Ostade 1654, sit low on the right beside the bouquet, and may have been touched up at some point.