Market Scene with a Quack at his Stall

This painting was painted about 1650 but the style and manner of presentation are those of an earlier period. This was the beginning of the great period of middle-class genre painting when artists were developing a style quite different from Victor’s over-familiar anecdotical approach.

The market-place is in fact limited to the quack’s table with an awning over it, and the group of simple people crowding round the stall. The church and houses round the market-square are outlined behind the group of onlookers and the village street with figures can be seen in the distance. The peasant sitting barefooted, one of his shoes discarded beside him, the charlatan in his finery, and the colourful company of villagers around them are characters in an anecdotical story which is indeed worthy of the painter’s brush. Victors was a pupil of Rembrandt, and his figures are clearly derivative but they are smooth and superficial compared with the character studies of the great master.