Nicolaes Maes -- The Idle Servant -- 1655 -- Oil on panel -- National Gallery, London

A picture that I am fond of recollecting in my mind's eye. The chiaroscuro ensures that we pause to consider both the thoughts of the mistress about her servant and what the artists has her communicate to us viewers.

The National Gallery notes that the servant has been painted in the traditional pose of acedia (sloth), while the mistress is perhaps shrugging her shoulders as she smiles at us.

Almost four centuries away from this Dutch scene and the Calvinist bourgeois culture in which it was painted, nonspecialists like me might well hesitate before ascribing any more definite meaning to the picture in general and the expression and gesture of the mistress in particular.

Yet Maes has invested this little genre scene with such power that it would be emotionally dishonest to pretend that one's response has been suspended, awaiting scholarly explication.

For me, what is illuminated here is the power of self restraint to overcome anger and the mistress's suggestion, with her gesture and her smile, that sinful though the servant may be, we fellow children of Adam and Eve might not be that much better.

A far cry from the wealthy of either then or now whining about the difficulty of finding decent help these days...

#Art #NicolaesMaes #NationlalGallery #TheIdleServant #SeventeenthCenturyArt #C17Art #DutchArt #GenrePainting #Painting #Calvinism

https://www.fromoldbooks.org/CirclingTheYear-1870/pages/136-christmas/

Not certain whether the maid in the porch of the inn is shopping, receiving a gift, or whether people are arriving to stay. The man with the whip seems to be giving her something. But at any rate it’s #Christmas and there’s a coach and horses laden down with food.

I’ve tried to keep the colours, although maybe it should be bluer.

#vintageArt #xmas #ChristmasGifts #stageCoach #winter #icicles #GIMP #Gimp_3 #GIMP3 #chromolithography #Victorian #genrePainting

"Around the World," André-Henri Dargelas, c. 1860.

Dargelas (1828-1906) was a French genre painter, noted mostly for his images of children in everyday situations, or romanticized depictions of country life, that became popular with the bourgeoisie of the time.

One can't help but wonder if Miley Cyrus saw this...

From a private collection.

#Art #GenrePainting #ChildishMischief #WreckingBall

Geli Korzhev, 1975 - Before a Long Journey

#GeliKorzhev #sovietart #genrepainting #1970s

https://www.fromoldbooks.org/ModerneKunst-07/pages/079-my-dearest-child/

A “genre painting” by Arnaldo Ferragut (1862-1925), engraved by Richard Bong in 1893.

#fobo #motherhood #woman #child #boy #love #affection #comfort #hugging #fromOldBooks #clipart #woodEngraving #art #genrePainting #vintageArt