Peasants making merry outside an inn

A son of Flemish parents, De Bloot was raised in the Dutch town of Rotterdam. He married three times and it is thought that he was relatively wealthy, but otherwise little is known about his life. There are no records documenting with whom he was trained as an artist. He produced a surprisingly large oeuvre, consisting primarily of bawdy peasant scenes, that reveal the influence of Adriaen Brouwer and David Teniers II.R
The present painting can be considered as one of the most brilliant works by Pieter de Bloot, in his rendering of rich narrative details of 17th century peasant life. The tavern yard is occupied by merrymaking men, women and children who are assembled around a long table. Figures show up also in the doorway and the windows of the rickety thatched tavern, which dominates the middle ground of the composition. To the right, the tavern yard opens to a flat Dutch landscape, with a village and a windmill in the distance. The group of brawling peasants contrasts to the vital but cheerful gathering in the foreground. This boisterous and drastic scene has a possible moral and didactical implication: drunkenness fueled the violence. With this allusion, De Bloot followed the pictorial tradition of his immediate predecessors Adriaen Brouwer and Adriaen van Ostade. His intention however, appears not to be satirizing or condemning the conduct of his coarse protagonists, but to create an admirable and highly amusing scene of rural life.