Tavern Scene

Adriaen van Ostade

National Gallery of Art

Fourteen men gather around two tables in a dim tavern in this vertical painting. More men sit around a high, broad chimney, and another person, perhaps a boy, moves a basket the size of a laundry hamper in the lower right corner of the painting. The people all have pale, peachy skin, and they all wear hats. Their hats, jackets, and trousers are painted in shades of brick red, muted blue, gray, or brown with a few touches of brighter white at some of their collars. Several hold or smoke long-stemmed white pipes. The table closer to us is in the center of the composition, with one narrow end angling into the lower left corner. Five men sit on benches or ladder-back wood chairs around that table, playing cards or looking on. Another man on the far side of the table stands and leans on a forearm against the chair back of one of the players. The final man at this table stands on our side with his back to us. He holds a pewter pitcher in one hand, and that arm blocks the light source, presumably a candle. Five more men huddle around a table placed under a window on the far wall of the tavern, to our right. A man sitting with his back to us hides that candleflame as well, but the glow lights the men’s faces. The moon shines in through a second window above the first. A pair of men talk together at the far side of the fireplace. A single candle burns on the front center of the chimney, which is higher than the men would be if standing up straight. The corners of the room fall into shadow. Two logs, the broken stem of a white clay pipe, and a piece of curving wood lie on the ground near the boy with the basket. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner, “Av Ostade” with an incomplete date, “166.”