The Fish Market

In August 1801 two dealers, Paillet of Paris and Coclers of Amsterdam, held a sale in Paris of pictures brought in from Holland, and the dealer Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun bought this one for the Louvre, then called the Muséum. It had passed through several Amsterdam collections, most recently that of Jan Gildemeester, whose paintings were auctioned the year before. A fishmonger in a soft hat leans over his board with a pale fish in his hands and looks up at whoever is buying, his knife ready beside him and flatfish laid out along the planks. Behind him, under a wooden roof on posts, the market is crowded with dark coats and tall hats. Van Ostade signed and dated it low down near the middle, though the last figure of the date is hard to read, so the Louvre gives it as around 1659.