Peasants Playing Cards

By the time van Ostade painted this in 1655, tobacco had gone from a curiosity to an everyday habit across the Dutch Republic, and the long white clay pipe was as ordinary in a tavern as the beer jug. Both are here. In the common room of an inn a few men lean over a game of cards, a pitcher of beer between them, clay pipes lit, the light coming low and warm across the table. Van Ostade had spent his career on scenes like this, and the earlier ones were closer to caricature, all bawling mouths and flying elbows. This one is calmer, the players simply absorbed in their hands. The card game itself was cheap entertainment for working people, played for small stakes over a drink at the end of the day.