The Schoolmaster

Dutch genre painters came back to the village school again and again, and the Louvre counts this panel among the masterpieces of van Ostade's late, fine manner. He signed and dated it 1662 on the master's desk, though the writing is now hard to make out. In the Dutch Republic a great many children, girls as well as boys, learned at least to read, often in small fee-paying schools like this one, where a single master taught every age at once in one room.

That is the room we are shown. The schoolmaster sits in his chair at the centre, turned to a boy who stands at his table reading his lesson. Around them, children of every size get on with their work or don't. Older pupils bend over long tables at the back, a toddler sits on the floor, two small ones squat in the corner with a box, and someone peers down from the top of the stairs. Sheets of paper hang from a cord along the far wall.

In the 18th century the panel belonged to Jean de Jullienne, the friend of the painter Watteau and publisher of his work, and in 1784 it was bought for Louis XVI.