Street Musicians at the Doorway of a House

genre

Ochtervelt is best known for his genre pictures which received a strong impetus from the works of Frans van Mieris the Elder done in the late 1650s and early 1660s. He adopts and often refines Mieris's motifs. Mieris's sexual allusions are not missing, but they are less explicit.

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Street Musicians at the Doorway of a House

About the Artist

Jacob Ochtervelt

1634 – 1682

Ochtervelt was a Dutch genre painter active mainly in Rotterdam, but from 1674 he lived in Amsterdam. He was influenced by Pieter de Hooch and through him by Vermeer. Apart from a few portraits and some early hunting party and "merry company" scenes, his paintings are almost all elegant upper-class interiors, in which he showed off a skill in painting silks and satins to rival that of Terborch. His figures are extremely refined, but there is often a sexual element in his painting.

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