Isaac van Ostade

By whom anonymously sold ('The Property of a Lady'), London, Sotheby's, 3 July 2013, lot 27, where acquired.

This painting is characteristic of Isaac can Ostade's work produced at the height of his career in the mid-1640s, shortly before his untimely demise. Although only active as a painter for about a decade, Isaac, who was trained by his older brother Adriaen van Ostade in Haarlem, is widely regarded as one of the most innovative of Dutch low-life and landscape painters, having made significant contributions to both genres in a very limited time period.

This composition is typical of Isaac's outdoor genre scenes from circa 1646 in its strong receding diagonal towards the left, the warm, hazy light and atmosphere, and the group of peasants theatrically illuminated in the centre. The subject is one that the artist favoured particularly towards the latter part of his practice, which included peasant figures engaged in scenes of everyday life, from gentle winter or beach landscapes, to barn and cottage interiors, to halts by roadside inns, and to festive village occasions, as here, where the associated dancing, drunkenness, and debauchery offer ample scope for caricature and satire, extending even to the depiction of the ramshackle tavern. The abandon of much of the company is juxtaposed with the quiet – perhaps admonitory – observation of two children, lower right, who appear relatively composed by comparison.

We are grateful to Dr Hiltraud Doll for endorsing the attribution to Isaac van Ostade on the basis of a digital image.