Three Drinking and Smoking Farmers in a Tavern

By 1667, when this little scene was painted, the clay pipe had become one of the ordinary pleasures of the Dutch Republic. Tobacco had come in through Dutch overseas trade earlier in the century, and by now a working man could buy a pipeful and a mug of beer and pass an afternoon in a tavern like this one. That is all that is happening here: three farmers, settled around a table, drinking and smoking in the half-light. Van Ostade had been painting this world for decades, and by the 1660s he no longer crowded it into the dark, brawling interiors of his youth. He warmed the light instead and let the smoke drift golden across the room. The pipe in the picture is the cheap white clay kind, made by the thousand in Gouda, snapped off short when the tip grew foul and thrown away.