Artists

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  Inside a Peasant's Cottage $AU 305.34 ~ 1,355.76
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  Feasting Peasants in a Tavern $AU 216.37 ~ 1,180.67
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  The School Master $AU 275.03 ~ 1,133.80
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  Alchemist $AU 272.78 ~ 1,067.59
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  The Fishwife $AU 232.74 ~ 1,253.66
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  Carousing Peasants in a Tavern $AU 254.78 ~ 1,111.08

Adriaen van Ostade (1610 Haarlem-1685 Haarlem) spent his entire life in the city of Haarlem, near Amsterdam. According to Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719), the artist learned his trade in the workshop of Frans Hals. He is first documented as a painter in 1632, and two years later he entered the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, of which he became dean in 1662. Ostade painted occasional history paintings and portraits, but devoted himself in particular to peasant genre scenes, a form that was noticably influenced by his work. In the 1630s he preferred small format, multi-figured paintings of tavern scenes and peasant dwellings, but from 1640s, the rough peasant milieu gave way to scenes of bourgeois and city life. Ostade completed several hundred paintings and left behind around 400 drawings and watercolors, as well as approximately 50 etchings. Among the artist's works are School Lesson, 1634, Landsmuseum, Mainz; Peasant Family, 1668, Royal Collection, London; and Peasant Family in a Courtyard, 1673, National Gallery of Art, Washington.