Cour de ferme

In the yard before a thatched farmhouse a group of peasants rest from their labours: one drinks, another smokes his pipe, a woman sits on the doorstep conversing with a child — a quiet slice of everyday life far from the noise of the taverns, in the manner of the peasant scenes that Isaack van Ostade painted in the wake of his elder brother Adriaen. Born in 1621, Isaack made farmyard and village scenes the centre of his short career before his death in 1649, and this panel, painted after 1646, counts among his most assured. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.