Lot 1477 Dα

This work shows a merry assortment of rustic characters gathered for festivities before a tavern. A bagpipe player on a barrel plays a jig to which several peasants dance, some are shown drinking, some are already depicted relieving themselves in various fashions, and many more intimate scenes are taking place. Slightly aside from the busy centre of the composition, a man has set up a stall selling cherries and is surrounded by a group of children clamouring for his wares.
The piece is an early work of Isaack van Ostade, which Bernhard Schnackenburg dates (in an expertise from 29.9.2015) to around 1640/41. Schnackenburg praises “the artist's unmistakeable sureness and lightness of touch” in the depiction of the figures. Isaack van Ostade was brother and pupil of the 11 year older Adriaen van Ostade. He followed his brother in the tradition of the peasant genre scene, a genre which he had established in Haarlem in the late 1620s, along with the Fleming Adriaen Brouwers.

The slightly tumbledown inn with a turret forms the architectural setting for this scene, and the diagonal axis of buildings leading back into the landscape composition follows the Haarlem convention of this time. The figural group before the tavern is brightly highlighted, although the colour palette is reduced to a few brown and green tones. However, the lightness and delicacy of the brushwork and the individual characterisation of the figures add life and vigour to the scene.