Two Smoking Peasants at the Coal Fire c. 1634

David Teniers the Younger created this oil on wood panel, "Two Smoking Peasants at the Coal Fire", sometime in the 17th century. The scene depicts a humble domestic interior in which male peasants smoke pipes while a woman prepares food. Teniers was active in Antwerp, then part of the Spanish Netherlands, at a time of pronounced social stratification. His genre scenes, like this one, frequently depicted peasant life, but were made for elite patrons. These images helped to construct and reinforce social hierarchies. They may appear to simply represent the everyday lives of peasants, but they also served to differentiate the upper classes from the lower classes. The production and consumption of such images were shaped by economic factors. Antwerp was a major commercial center, and the art market there catered to the tastes of wealthy merchants and nobles. So to understand this artwork, we might look into archival records detailing Teniers's patrons and the social history of class relations in the Spanish Netherlands.