Flemish farmhouse interior with children’s breakfast

Flemish farmhouse interior with children’s breakfast Signed (lower left) Oil on canvas laid on carboard 43 x 61 cm XVIIth century Antwerp is an important and prosperous commercial uvial center, which helps the growth and emancipation of its artists and the rise of masters such as Rubens, Van Dyck or Jordaens. Artists tend to specialise in subjects; portrait, landscape, still life or genre scenes. In the XVIth century genre painting, evoking everyday life, gradually expands in Europe and particularly in the Flanders. Like in this scene of the interior of a tavern, the painting evokes reality and simplicity by the observation of its familiar, intimate and popular environments. In the foreground of the scene a man and children are eating a simple meal of soup and bread while men in the background are merrily talking and smoking their pipes in front of the replace and sitting on barrels that evoke the rudimental character of the place. Mattheus von Helmont was a genre scenes painter. Proli c producer, his painting is in uenced by David Teniers the Younger depicting mainly interior scenes with peasants, alchemists, craftsmen or taverns, village fairs and other scenes. In 1645, he was admitted to the Guild of St Luke but getting into repeated brawls escaped Antwerp leaving his paintings to creditors. Von Helmont then entered the Brussels painters’ guild in 1674.