The dance in the inn

After Rembrandt, Adriaen van Ostade is the most famous Dutch etcher of the 17th century. He lived and worked in Haarlem, producing paintings for the local market. His speciality was peasant scenes in which the lives of ordinary folk are described with sympathy and charm. Scenes of jolly, carousing peasants appealed to the urban middle class to which Van Ostade belonged and for whom he worked. In his 50 or so etchings (more than half are represented in Te Papa's collection), men and women work, dance, sing, drink, smoke, play games, gossip, quarrel and flirt.

<em>The dance in the inn</em> shows the interior of a tavern in which the well-lubricated patrons are entertaining themselves. In the middle, a fiddler and bagpiper accompany a dancing couple, while a dog takes refuge from the din under a stable. On the left, an entreating child is ignored by his mother who is more interested in the standing man, whose gaze is fixed on the embracing couple on the far fright. Within the context of the ordered cleanliness espoused by respectable Dutch society of the time, the scene may have been intended as a moral warning against the evils of drink.

Van Ostade's etchings were issued in very small numbers in his lifetime, and early impressions are rare. The plates were acquired by a Parisian publisher in the 18th century and widely issued at a time when Van Ostade's paintings were much sought after but hard to come by. It was probably through these 18th century printings that William Hogarth, the great English painter and engraver of everyday life subjects, knew Van Ostade's work. His influence can also be seen in Hogarth's tavern scene in <em>A rake's progress</em> (Te Papa 1965-0001-1/3). In the middle of the 19th century his reputation soared among artists of the Parisian avant-garde such as Gustave Courbet and Jean-Francois Millet, who were attracted by his democratic subject matter and realist style. Among the revivers of etching in the same period, Van Ostade was considered second only to Rembrandt as the model to be emulated.

Source: David Maskill, 'Adriaen van Ostade...', in William McAloon (ed.), <em>Art at Te Papa</em> (Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2009), p. 34.