The Halt at the Inn

1645

Isack van Ostade

Artist, Dutch, 1621 - 1649

A group of pale-skinned men, women, and children along with a few horses and dogs form a loose line across a dirt road, which is flanked with rows of buildings on both sides that converge in the tree-filled distance in this horizontal painting. The scene is painted mostly with sage and moss green, peanut and caramel brown, cream white, and black. Most of the people wear hats or caps. The women wear long dresses and the men wear jackets and pants. One man wearing a black jacket with buttons down the front, and with white at the neck and cuffs, leans down from atop a black horse at the center of the group. Another man with a tall, cream-white, brimmed hat and white collar stands behind a dappled horse to our right of center. Men, women, and children, most wearing tattered and worn clothing, look on. One woman to our left holds a baby strapped to her back and others gather around the horses. A pair of men in front of a stone building to our right smoke long, white, tobacco pipes. Others peer out of the open door and windows. An illegible wooden sign hangs above the door. Leafy vines grow over parts of the building façade. To our left, a woman sits on the ground and holds a spindle as she winds wool with a spinning frame. A man leans down over her shoulder, and a child looks away from us, into a fenced enclosure in front of a building. People, horses, dogs, and chickens are scattered along the road into the distance, and a church steeple rises against the ivory-white clouds in the sky beyond. A partial inscription with the artist’s name and date appears in black paint in the lower right corner: “Isack van Os 164.”

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The vivid sense of daily life that seventeenth-century Dutch artists conveyed in their work is one of that period’s most delightful aspects, and Isack van Ostade was the most important of a number of Haarlem artists who painted rural life at that time. The social area outside a tavern became one of his favorite subjects, providing him the opportunity to combine his skills both as a landscapist and as a genre painter.

In this painting, we witness the bustle of activity outside a village inn as two well-dressed travelers arrive and dismount from their horses. A woman with a child strapped to her back has stopped to watch, and others converse with the travelers. The street is filled with people, and the informality of all these human interactions creates a sense of conviviality. Van Ostade carefully depicts the timeworn brick-and-mortar construction of the inn and accentuates the charming character of the scene with details such as the vines clinging to the buildings. He exaggerated the level of disrepair to make the structures more picturesque. Such liberties in his painted works are revealed by the drawings he made from life on his treks in the countryside around Haarlem, which clearly show the various inns to be in good repair.

A student of his more famous older brother Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685), Isack died at the young age of twenty-eight. Despite his short artistic career, he had a significant influence on his contemporaries, including Jan Steen (1625/1626–1679), with whom he occasionally collaborated.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 47

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel transferred to canvas

  • Credit Line

    Widener Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 50 x 66 cm (19 11/16 x 26 in.)
    framed: 72.4 x 88.6 x 6 cm (28 1/2 x 34 7/8 x 2 3/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1942.9.49

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: The Halt at the Inn, 1645

This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.

Scholarly Series:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Marie-Caroline-Ferdinande-Louise de Naples, duchesse de Berry [1798-1870]; (De Berry sale, by Bataillard and Charles Pillet, Paris, 4-6 April 1837, no. 19). Charles-Auguste-Louis-Joseph, comte de Morny [1811-1865, later duc de Morny], Paris; (his sale, Phillips, London, 20-21 June 1848, 2nd day, no. 108). Mrs. Stephen Lyne-Stephens [1812-1894, née Pauline Duvernay or Yolande-Marie-Louise Duvernay], Lynford Hall, Mundford, near Thetford, Norfolk, London (Roehampton), and Paris; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 9 May 1895, no. 340); (Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris), in 1895.[1] (Eugene Fischhof, Paris); sold 1898 to Peter A.B. Widener, Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; inheritance from Estate of Peter A.B. Widener by gift through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; gift 1942 to NGA.
[1] Reproduced in Charles Sedelmeyer, Illustrated Catalogue of the Second Hundred of Paintings by Old Masters, Sedelmeyer Gallery, Paris, 1895: 34, no. 28.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1909

  • The Hudson-Fulton Celebration, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1909, no. 70.

Bibliography

1829

  • Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829-1842: 9(1842):127-128, no. 17.

1885

  • Catalogue of Paintings Forming the Collection of P.A.B. Widener, Ashbourne, near Philadelphia. 2 vols. Paris, 1885-1900: 2(1900):235, repro.

1895

  • Sedelmeyer, Charles. Illustrated Catalogue of the Second Hundred Paintings by Old Masters, Sedelmeyer Gallery. Paris, 1895: 34, no. 28, repro.

1907

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 3(1910):450-451, no. 37.

1909

  • Valentiner, Wilhelm R. Catalogue of a collection of paintings by Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. The Hudson-Fulton Celebration 1. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1909: xxviii-xxix, 71, no. 70, repro., 155, 161.

1910

  • Valentiner, Wilhelm R. "Die Ausstellung holländischer Gemälde in New York." Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft 3 (1910): 10.

  • Valentiner, Wilhelm R. Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Old Dutch Masters Held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Connection with the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. New York, 1910: 16, repro. 246, 247, no. 70.

1913

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis, and Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Pictures in the collection of P. A. B. Widener at Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania: Early German, Dutch & Flemish Schools. Philadelphia, 1913: unpaginated, repro.

1923

  • Paintings in the Collection of Joseph Widener at Lynnewood Hall. Intro. by Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1923: unpaginated, repro.

1931

  • Paintings in the Collection of Joseph Widener at Lynnewood Hall. Intro. by Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1931: 92, repro.

1938

  • Waldmann, Emil. "Die Sammlung Widener." Pantheon 22 (November 1938): 336, 338.

1942

  • National Gallery of Art. Works of art from the Widener collection. Washington, 1942: 6.

1948

  • National Gallery of Art. Paintings and Sculpture from the Widener Collection. Washington, 1948 (reprinted 1959): 52, repro.

1959

  • National Gallery of Art. Paintings and Sculpture from the Widener Collection. Reprint. Washington, DC, 1959: 52, repro.

1965

  • National Gallery of Art. Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. Washington, 1965: 98.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 86, repro.

1975

  • National Gallery of Art. European paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. Washington, 1975: 256-257, repro.

1981

  • Schnackenburg, Bernhard. Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Desamtdarstellung mit Werkkstalogen. 2 vols. Hamburg, 1981: 1:35, 274, no. 59, repro.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 291, no. 383, color repro.

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1984: 16-17, color repro.

1985

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. Washington, 1985: 296, repro.

1991

  • National Gallery of Art. Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1991: 72.

1992

  • National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1992: 126, color repro.

1995

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1995: 191-194, color repro. 193.

2004

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Gerard ter Borch. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; Detroit Institute of Arts. New Haven, 2004: 60, fig. 1.

  • Franits, Wayne E. Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting. Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution. New Haven and London, 2004: 204, fig. 190.

Inscriptions

lower right: Isack van Os... / 164[?]

Wikidata ID

Q20177201

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