The
Low Countries dominated the field until the 18th century. In the 17th century both
Flemish Baroque painting and
Dutch Golden Age painting produced numerous specialists who mostly painted genre scenes. In the previous century, the Flemish
Renaissance painter
Jan Sanders van Hemessen painted innovative large-scale genre scenes, sometimes including a moral theme or a religious scene in the background in the first half of the 16th century. These were part of a pattern of "
Mannerist inversion" in
Antwerp painting, giving "low" elements previously in the decorative background of images prominent emphasis. In the second half of the 16th century,
Pieter Aertsen and
Joachim Beuckelaer painted in Antwerp works showing in the foreground cooks or market-sellers amidst a bountiful spread of vegetables, fruit and/or meat, with small religious scenes in spaces in the background. Around the same time,
Pieter Brueghel the Elder made peasants and their activities, very naturalistically treated, the subject of many of his paintings. , 1668
Adriaen and
Isaac van Ostade,
Jan Steen,
Adriaen Brouwer,
David Teniers,
Joos van Craesbeeck,
Gillis van Tilborgh,
Aelbert Cuyp,
Willem van Herp,
David Ryckaert III.
Jacob Jordaens,
Johannes Vermeer and
Pieter de Hooch were among the many painters specializing in genre subjects in the
Low Countries during the 17th century. The generally small scale of these artists' paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. '' by
Adriaen Brouwer, 1636 The apparent 'realism' of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art gives the viewer the initial impression that the artist solely intends to depict scenes of common life in a realistic way. Underneath the realistic representation are, however, often hidden underlying meanings, either moral or symbolic. For instance,
Gabriel Metsu's
The Poultry seller, 1662 shows an old poultry seller handing a young woman a live
rooster with its head craning upwards. The suggestive pose of the rooster's head and the fact that the Dutch word for 'birds' (vogelen) was also a vulgar term for sexual intercourse indicated that the artist also included a scabrous meaning in his painting. Genre painters often included symbolic meanings in their paintings. For instance, Adriaen Brouwer painted a number of genre portraits that represent the five senses or the seven deadly sins. An example is his genre group portrait
The Smokers which depicts the sense of taste. Other artists included moral meanings into their genre scenes. Jan Steen's
The Happy Family painted in 1668 depicts a merry family evening with the head of the family, clearly inebriated, singing out his lungs, backed up by the mother and grandmother. The children join in on musical instruments. The moral of the picture is clarified in the note hanging from the mantelpiece reading "So de ouden songen, so pijpen de jongen" ("As the Old Sing, So the Young Pipe"), i.e. children will learn their behaviour from their parents.
Jacob Jordaens had painted a series of paintings on the same subject matter about 30 years earlier., 1655 One of the recurring themes in Flemish and Dutch genre painting is that of the
merry company. These works typically show a group of figures at a party, whether making music at home or just drinking in a tavern. Other common types of scenes showed markets or fairs, village festivities ("kermesse"), or soldiers in their camp or guardroom. The Dutch painter
Pieter van Laer arrived in 1625 in Rome where he started to paint genre paintings incorporating scenes of the Roman
Campagna. He also joined a loose organisation of Flemish and Dutch painters in Rome known as the
Bentvueghels (Dutch for 'birds of a feather'). Van Laer was given the nickname "Il Bamboccio", which means "ugly doll" or "puppet". A number of Flemish and Dutch and later also Italian painters, who painted genre scenes of the Roman countryside inspired by van Laer's works were subsequently referred to as the
Bamboccianti. The initial Bamboccianti included
Andries and
Jan Both,
Karel Dujardin,
Jan Miel and
Johannes Lingelbach.
Sébastien Bourdon was also associated with this group during his early career. Other Bamboccianti include
Michiel Sweerts,
Thomas Wijck,
Dirck Helmbreker,
Jan Asselyn,
Anton Goubau,
Willem Reuter, and
Jacob van Staverden. Their whose works would inspire local artists
Michelangelo Cerquozzi,
Giacomo Ceruti,
Antonio Cifrondi, and
Giuseppe Maria Crespi among many others., 1718/19 '' by Jean-François de Troy, 1735
Louis le Nain was an important exponent of genre painting in 17th-century France, painting groups of peasants at home, where the 18th century would bring a heightened interest in the depiction of everyday life, whether through the
romanticized paintings of
Watteau,
Lancret,
Jean-François de Troy,
Fragonard. The oeuvre of
Chardin is considered as one of the realist painters of 18th century genre painting.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) and others painted detailed and rather sentimental groups or individual portraits of peasants that were to be influential on 19th-century painting. In England,
William Hogarth (1697–1764) conveyed comedy, social criticism and moral lessons through canvases that told stories of ordinary people ful of narrative detail (aided by long sub-titles), often in serial form, as in his ''
A Rake's Progress'', first painted in 1732–33, then engraved and published in print form in 1735. Developments in 16th Netherlandish art were received in Spain through the presence of Flemish artists working on projects in Spain as well as through Spain's sovereignty over the Spanish Netherlands. During the
Spanish Golden Age of painting in the 17th century, many
picaresque genre scenes of street life as well as the kitchen scenes known as
bodegones were painted by Spanish artists such as
Velázquez (1599–1660) and
Murillo (1617–82). More than a century later, the artist
Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) used genre scenes in painting and
printmaking as a medium for dark commentary on the human condition. Beginning in about 1808 Goya painted a significant number of genre scenes and he dealt with genre subjects again in various drawings during the period from 1810 to 1823. ==19th century==