Beer In Art #156: Adriaen Van Ostade’s Ale House Interior

Today’s work of art is by the Dutch artist Adriaen van Ostade, a Golden Age painter of genre scenes. The painting is usually known simply as Ale House Interior though its full title is actually Ale House Interior with Nine Peasants Smoking, Drinking, and Playing Cards or Tric-trac. Completed in 1673, it’s “pen and brown ink, brown wash, watercolor in varying tints of gray, green, yellow, purple, and pink, with some bodycolor, over traces of graphite, on paper; [with a] framing line in brown ink.” Today, the original is in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

Here’s how one source describes the painting:

This magnificent drawing was executed using a very elaborate technique, signed and dated by Van Ostade. In a highly detailed manner, it depicts the interior of a tavern and the different activities going on: a card game, beer drinking, a relaxing smoke by the fireplace. The dress, furniture, accessories and decor are all accurately rendered in this scene of daily life in Holland during the seventeenth century.

To learn more about Adriaen van Ostade, Wikipedia and the J. Paul Getty Museum each have a biography of him, and you can also see links to his works online at ArtCyclopedia. The Web Gallery of Art and the Wikimedia Commons also feature a number of his paintings.