Adriaen van Ostade was a Dutch painter and etcher who specialised in peasant genre scenes. These included peasants drinking, dancing and revelling, interior domestic scenes and open air scenes with itinerant musicians and pedlars. Occasionally, he also painted Biblical subjects, portraits and landscapes.
Ostade was born in Haarlem in 1610, the son of a weaver. According to Houbraken, he was a pupil of Frans Hals at the same time as the Flemish painter of peasant scenes Adriaen Brouwer, by whom his early works were influenced.
Van Ostade entered the Haarlem Guild in 1634, served as its hoofdman in 1647 and 1661, and was appointed Dean in 1662. He was a prominent citizen of Haarlem and became a member of the militia company in 1636. He spent his entire life in his native city where he died in 1685. Among his pupils were his short-lived but brilliant brother Isack, Cornelis Dusart, Cornelis Bega, Michiel van Musscher and Jan Steen.
The work of Adriaen van Ostade is represented in the National Gallery, London; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
