Interior of a Barn

The children are fighting, the woman has stopped working on a cow carcass to scold them. Just another day in the barn. Egbert van der Poel, a respected Dutch artist who thought of himself as a landscape painter, painted many such scenes of country life. Dramatic images of burning buildings at night were a specialty, as were interior tableaus like this one. The buckets, basins, and bowls near the woman resemble the household still lifes for which Dutch artists in the 1600s were known.

Credit: The John R. Van Derlip Fund