Adriaen van Ostade (baptized as Adriaen Jansz Hendricx 10 December 1610 – buried 2 May 1685) was a

Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age ( nl, Gouden Eeuw ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands, roughly spanning the era from 1588 (the birth of the Dutch Republic) to 1672 (the Rampjaar, "Disaster Year"), in which Dutch trade, science, and art an ...

painter of

genre works Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, work, and street scenes. Such representations (also called genre works, ...

, showing everyday life of ordinary men and women.

Life

Adriaen van Ostade - Peasants in a Tavern

According to Arnold Houbraken, he and his brother were pupils of

Frans Hals Frans Hals the Elder (, , ; – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of genre works, who lived and worked in Haarlem. Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century gro ...

and like him, spent most of their lives in Haarlem. He thought they were " Lubekkers" by birth, though this has since found to be false.Adriaan & Izaak van Ostade biography
in ''De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen'' (1718) by Arnold Houbraken, courtesy of the

Digital library for Dutch literature The Digital Library for Dutch Literature (Dutch: Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren or DBNL) is a website (showing the abbreviation as dbnl) about Dutch language and Dutch literature. It contains thousands of literary texts, second ...

He was the eldest son of

Jan Hendricx Ostade Jan, JaN or JAN may refer to: Acronyms * Jackson, Mississippi (Amtrak station), US, Amtrak station code JAN * Jackson-Evers International Airport, Mississippi, US, IATA code * Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), a Syrian militant group * Japanese Article N ...

, a weaver from the hamlet of Ostade near

Eindhoven Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022,Isaack were born in Haarlem, they adopted the name "van Ostade" as painters. According to the RKD, he became a pupil in 1627 of the portrait painter

, at that time the master of Jan Miense Molenaer.Adriaen van Ostade
in the RKD In 1632, he is registered in Utrecht (where, like

Jacob Duck Jacob Duck (also ''Ducq, Duyck, Duick, Duc'') (1600 – buried 22/28 January 1667) was a Dutch painter and etcher.Jac ...

, he was probably influenced by the village scenes of Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot, which were popular in his day), but in 1634 he was back in Haarlem where he joined the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. At age of twenty-six, he joined a company of the civic guard at Haarlem, and at twenty-eight he married. His wife died two years later in 1640. In 1657, "as a widower", he married Anna Ingels. He again became a widower in 1666. He opened a workshop and took on pupils. His notable pupils were

Cornelis Pietersz Bega Cornelis Pietersz Bega, or ''Cornelis Pietersz Begijn'' (1631/32 – 27 August 1664) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver. Bega was born, lived and worked in Haarlem and was the son of sculptor and goldsmith Pieter Jansz. Begijn. Hi ...

, Cornelis Dusart, Jan de Groot, Frans de Jongh, Michiel van Musscher, Isaac van Ostade, Evert Oudendijck, and Jan Steen. In 1662 and again in 1663, he is registered as deacon of the St. Luke guild in Haarlem. In the

rampjaar In Dutch history, the year 1672 is referred to as the nl, Rampjaar, label=none (Disaster Year). In May 1672, following the outbreak of the Franco-Dutch War and its peripheral conflict the Third Anglo-Dutch War, France, supported by Münster and ...

(1672), he packed up his goods with the intention of fleeing to Lübeck, which is why Houbraken felt he had family there. He got as far as

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

, however, when he was convinced to stay by the art collector Konstantyn Sennepart, in whose house he stayed, and where he made a series of colored drawings, that were later bought for 1300 florins (along with some drawings by Gerrit Battem) by , where Houbraken saw them and fell in love with his portrayals of village life. Jonas Witsen (1676–1715) was the man who convinced Houbraken to move to Amsterdam from

Dordrecht Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a city and municipality in the Western Netherlands, located in the province of South Holland. It is the province's fifth-largest city after R ...

. He had been the city secretary and was probably his patron. His successor, Johan van Schuylenburgh, who became city secretary in 1712, was the man to whom Houbraken dedicated the first volume of his ''Schouburg''.

Work

Ostade was the contemporary of the Flemish painters

David Teniers the Younger David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II (bapt. 15 December 1610 – 25 April 1690) was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile ar ...

and

Adriaen Brouwer Adriaen Brouwer (, in Oudenaarde – January 1638, in Antwerp) was a Flemish painter active in Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the first half of the 17th century.

. Like them, he spent his life in delineation of ordinary life, depicting tavern scenes, village fairs and country quarters. Between Teniers and Ostade the contrast lies in the different condition of the agricultural classes of Brabant and

Holland Holland is a geographical regionG. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, ''Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I'', Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105 and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th c ...

and in the atmosphere and dwellings peculiar to each region. Brabant has more sun and more comfort; Teniers, in consequence, is silvery and sparkling, and the people he paints are fair specimens of their culture. Holland, in the vicinity of Haarlem, seems to have suffered much from war; the air is moist and hazy, and the people depicted by Ostade are short and ill-favoured, marked with adversity's stamp in feature and dress. Brouwer, who painted the peasant in his frolics and passions, brought more of the spirit of

into his depictions than did his colleague; but the type is the same as Ostade's. During the first years of his career, Ostade tended toward the same exaggeration and frolic as his comrade, though he is distinguished from his rival by a more general use of light and shade, especially a greater concentration of light on a small surface in contrast with a broad expanse of gloom. The key of his harmonies remained for a time in the scale of greys, but his treatment is dry and careful in a style which shuns no difficulties of detail. He shows us the cottages, inside and out: vine leaves cloak the poverty of the outer walls; indoors, nothing decorates the patchwork of rafters and thatch, the tumble-down chimneys and the ladder staircases, the rustic Dutch home of those days. The greatness of Ostade lies in how often he caught the poetic side of the peasant class in spite of its coarseness. He gave the magic light of a sun-gleam to their lowly sports, their quarrels, even their quieter moods of enjoyment; he clothed the wreck of the cottages with gay vegetation. It was natural, given the tendency to effect which marked Ostade from the first, that he should have been fired by emulation to rival the masterpieces of

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally co ...

. His early pictures are not so rare but that we can trace how he glided from one period to the other. Before the dispersal of the collection at

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

in 1872, it was easy to study the steel-grey harmonies, the exaggerated caricature of his early works between 1632 and 1638. There is a picture in the Vienna Gallery of a ''Countryman Having his Tooth Drawn'', unsigned, and painted about 1632; a "Bagpiper" of 1635 in the

Liechtenstein Gallery The Liechtenstein Museum is a private art museum in Vienna, Austria. It contains much of the art collection of its owners, the Princely Family of Liechtenstein, rulers of the principality of Liechtenstein. It includes important European works of a ...

at Vienna; cottage scenes of 1635 and 1636 in the museums of

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the German States of Germany, state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital o ...

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, and

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

; and the ''Card Players'' of 1637 in the Liechtenstein palace at

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, making up for the loss of the Gsell collection. The same style marks most of those pieces. Adriaen_van_Ostade_Goyer_en_Questiers_1650

About 1638 or 1640, the influence of Rembrandt suddenly changed his style. He painted the '' Annunciation'' of the Brunswick Museum: angels, appearing in the sky to Dutch boors half-asleep amidst their cattle, sheep and dogs in front of a cottage, recall at once the similar subject by Rembrandt, who effectively lighted the principal groups by rays propelled to earth from a murky sky. Ostade, however, did not succeed here in giving dramatic force and expression; his shepherds were without much emotion, passion or surprise. His picture was an effect of light, and masterly as such, in its sketchy rubbings of dark brown tone relieved by strongly impasted lights, but without the very qualities which made his usual subjects attractive. In 1642 he painted the beautiful interior at the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

:Among the treasures of the

is a striking picture of a father sitting in state, his wife at his side, surrounded by his son, five daughters, and a young married couple in a handsomely furnished room. By an old tradition, Ostade here painted himself and his children in holiday attire; but the style is much too refined for the painter of boors, and Ostade had but one daughter. a mother tending her cradled child, her husband sitting nearby, beside a great chimney; the darkness of a country loft dimly illumined by a sunbeam shining on the casement. One might think the painter intended to depict the Nativity; but there is nothing holy in the surroundings, nothing attractive, indeed, except the wonderful Rembrandtesque transparency, the brownish tone, and the admirable keeping of the minutest parts. Ostade was more at home in a similar effect applied to the commonplace incident of the ''Slaughtering of a Pig'', one of the masterpieces of 1643, and once in the Gsell collection. In this and similar subjects of the previous and succeeding years, he returned to the homely themes in which his power and wonderful observation had made him a master. He does not seem to have gone back to

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...

illustrations until 1667, when he produced an admirable ''Nativity'' which is only surpassed in arrangement and colour by Rembrandt's ''Carpenter's Family'' at the Louvre, or by the ''Woodcutter and Children'' in the gallery of Cassel. Almost innumerable are the more familiar themes to which he devoted his brush during this interval: from small single figures, representing smokers or drinkers, to allegories of the five senses ( Hermitage and Brunswick galleries), half-lengths of fishmongers and bakers, cottage brawls, scenes of gambling, itinerant players and quacks, and ninepins players in the open air. Adriaen van Ostade 011

The humor in some of these pieces is contagious, as in the ''Tavern Scene'' of the

La Caze Collection Louis La Caze (6 May 1798 – 28 September 1869) was a successful French physician and collector of paintings whose bequest of 583 paintings to the Musée du Louvre was one of the largest the museum has ever received. Among the paintings, the mos ...

(Louvre, 1653). His art may be studied in the large series of dated pieces which adorn every European capital from

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. Buckingham Palace has a large number, and many a good specimen lies hidden in private collections in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. Should we select a few as peculiarly worthy of attention, we might point to the ''Rustics in a Tavern'' of 1662 at

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a list of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's ad ...

, the ''Village School'' of the same year at the Louvre, the ''Tavern Court-yard'' of 1670 at Cassel, the ''Sportsmen's Rest'' of 1671 at

, and the ''Fiddler and his Audience'' of 1673 at the Hague. At Amsterdam we have the likeness of a painter, sitting with his back to the spectator, at his easel. The colour-grinder is at work in a corner, a pupil prepares a palette, and a black dog sleeps on the ground. A replica of this picture, with the date 1666, is in the Dresden gallery. Both depictions are supposed to represent Ostade himself, but unfortunately we see the artist's back and not his face. In an etching (Bartsch, 32), the painter shows himself in profile at work on a canvas. Two of his latest dated works, the ''Village Street'' and the ''Skittle Players'', noteworthy items in the Ashburton and Ellesmere collections, were executed in 1676 without any sign of declining powers. He died in 1685 in Haarlem.

Legacy

The number of Ostade's pictures is given by Smith at 385, but by

Hofstede de Groot Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (9 November 1863 – 14 April 1930), was a Dutch art collector, art historian and museum curator. Life He was born in Dwingeloo and spent some time in Switzerland in his youth due to weak lungs, where he learned Germ ...

(1910) at over 900. At his death, the stock of his unsold pieces was over 200. His engraved plates were put up to auction with the pictures. Fifty etched plates, most of them dated 1647–1648, were disposed of in 1686. there are 220 of his pictures in public and private collections, of which 104 are signed and dated, while seventeen are signed with the name but not with the date. The prices which Ostade received are not known; but pictures which were worth £40 in 1750 were worth £1,000 a century later, and Earl Dudley gave £4,120 for a cottage interior in 1876. The signatures of Ostade vary at different periods, but the first two letters are generally interlaced. Up to 1635, Ostade writes himself Ostaden, e.g. in the ''Bagpiper'' of 1635 in the Liechtenstein collection at Vienna. Later on, he uses the long s (ſ), and occasionally he signs in capital letters. His pupils are his own brother Isaack, Cornelis Bega, Cornelis Dusart, and Richard Brakenburg.

List of works

*'' Barber Extracting a Tooth'' *''

The Fish Market ''The Fish Market'' is a 1659 oil on canvas painting by Adriaen van Ostade. It has been described as a post-Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch ...

References

*Dagelijckse aantekeninge, by Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne, with an introduction by Bert Sliggers Jr., Haarlem, 1979

External links

*
Works by Adriaen van Ostade in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa TongarewaWorks by Adriaen van Ostade in the Art Museum of EstoniaWorks by Adriaen van Ostade in the University of Michigan Museum of ArtLiterature on Adraen van Ostade
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ostade, Adriaen van 1610 births 1685 deaths Dutch Golden Age painters Dutch male painters Dutch genre painters Dutch printmakers Artists from Haarlem Painters from Haarlem Sibling artists