Hunters and a Landlady in an Inn

By 1650, when this was painted, the long war with Spain was two years over, and Ludolf de Jongh, then one of Rotterdam's busiest genre painters, was easing away from the smoky guardrooms full of idle soldiers he had been painting toward a more comfortable world. Here that world is a country inn. A hunting party has come in from the field, and the landlady stands among the men, serving their drink. Hunting in the Dutch Republic was not something everyone could do. The right to it was tied to land and rank, so a group of huntsmen taking their ease reads as men of some standing at their leisure. De Jongh built the scene up from the Caravaggist tavern pictures of painters like Jacob Duck, whose light and low-life company he knew well. Within a decade he would drop these inns entirely and paint the same sort of company outdoors, in elegant hunts.