Tavern Scene

Dusart was a Dutch genre painter and engraver, pupil and close friend of Adriaen van Ostade, whose style he followed. On Ostade’s death Dusart inherited his pictures and completed a number of them.

This tavern scene was executed in the manner of Ostade, in a somewhat more exquisite way. Compared with the destitute-looking peasant interiors seen in earlier works, this tavern is bright and well-arranged. The peasants are seen eating, drinking and enjoying themselves and they are more carefully dressed than the figures in earlier peasant scenes. Even the gestures of these peasants have been made to look distinguished, but the result is to make them more ordinary and less interesting than the figures in van Ostade’s paintings.