Interior with a lady choosing fish (Alternative Title: A Lady Buying Fish)

Quiringh Gerritz van Brekelenkam 1622/29 - 1669/79

Summary

Quiringh van Brekelenkam, a pupil of Gerard Dou, specialised in scenes of everyday life, for which there was a flourishing market in prosperous 17th-century Holland. He was an important member of the Leiden School of genre painting, joining the guild in 1648. This painting shows the virtues of a good housewife. Housewives' manuals of the day praised sewing as one of the signs of an industrious life and a docile nature. They also instructed women to shop wisely with their husband's money, provide wholesome food for the family and supervise servants well. The importance of this woman's role as carer is reflected in the painting that hangs in the background, which shows a shepherdess looking after her flock. Here, the woman has put aside her sewing to select some fish brought to her by her maid. The maid, too, is presented as a model of domestic propriety, having apparently been interrupted cleaning her mistress's shoes. The cleaning tools remind us of her broader duty to keep the house clean and tidy, to which end the uncouth fishmonger, whose coarse appearance contrasts with theirs, is left on the threshold of the immaculate interior. Within the home all is harmonious thanks to this housewife's good offices, but out in the street there is a perilous world of which she probably has little experience and over which she has no control. The women are in the voorhuis, or front room, which was used as an entrance area for vendors and visitors, and whose windows made it ideal for sewing.

Display Label

Interior with a Lady Choosing Fish 1664 Quirin van Brekelenkam around 1620 - 1668 Oil on panel This painting shows the virtues of a good housewife. Housewives' manuals of the day praised sewing as a sign of an industrious life and a docile nature. They also instructed her to shop wisely with her husband's money. The importance of her role as carer is reflected in the painting which hangs in the background. It shows a shepherdess looking after her flock. The uncouth fishmonger is kept on the step. He is part of the perilous world outside the home of which she is largely ignorant and over which she has no control. Assheton Bennett bequest 1979.449