Morning Visit

A greengrocer has made his morning delivery, and before moving on he sits at the kitchen table filling his pipe and chatting with the maid, who stands with a little boy. Baskets of lettuce and carrots wait on the floor. De Lelie painted this in 1796 in the manner of the Dutch kitchen scenes of the 17th century, a good hundred years older, and he took care over every surface, the earthenware jug, the pewter on the mantelpiece, the brass against the white tiles. In 1808, when the new Royal Museum that King Louis Napoleon had founded in Amsterdam was buying work by living Dutch painters, the panel was bought for the collection. Today the Rijksmuseum hangs it in its gallery of 18th-century painting.