Peasant Quartet

In 1632 the Dutch poet Jacob Cats brought out a book of proverbs and emblems, and among its sayings was an old one, as the old sing, so pipe the young. Children do what they see the grown-ups do. Six years later the Antwerp painter Jacob Jordaens turned that proverb into a large canvas and wrote the words across the top of it, in the city where Brouwer spent his last years. Brouwer's panel turns on the same idea without a single written word. The title calls the company a peasant quartet, and the museum points to what surrounds them. Pipes, beer jugs and a dog asleep on the floor stand for idleness and for giving in to earthly pleasures. Then look at the older child behind the barrel. The museum reads that child as the sign of the poor example the adults are setting, greedily slurping porridge straight out of the bowl.