|
The intimacy, whether or not with a moralising undertone, which we detect in interior paintings of other 17th-century Dutch painters (e.g. Gerard Ter Borch), are far removed from the passionate, almost un-Dutch squabbling of the Inn Scene painted by Adriaen van Ostade, who developed after 1640 towards a 'genial homeliness'. Dutch artists managed to capture brilliantly the twin, closed worlds of the middle-classes (upper and lower) on the one hand, and the proletariat on the other. The truthfulness of their work helped the genre to develop into one of the peaks of 17th century art.
|
