#genre-painting

Man, woman, glass of wine in a tidy room — this was a whole genre in the Netherlands, and buyers at the time apparently read it straight off as a warning about where the drinking was heading. There's said to be a figure in the stained glass holding a set of reins, which stood for holding yourself back.

He trained as a pharmacist and only turned to painting after an illness, or so the story goes, and then spent decades on small comic scenes of shabby, striving men. He made more than one version of this one. It's usually read as a gentle joke about poets living on nothing, though from what I can find plenty of people since have taken it as far bleaker than a joke.