The Young Innkeeper
Cornelis Pietersz. Bega (Dutch, 1631/32-1664)
c. 1650
- Medium
- Etching on cream laid paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Plate: 17.4 × 15.6 cm (6 7/8 × 6 3/16 in.); Sheet: 18.2 × 16.4 cm (7 3/16 × 6 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- The Wallace L. DeWolf and Joseph Brooks Fair Collections
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
While his talents were wide-ranging—from painting and drawing to etching—Cornelis Pietersz. Bega’s interest in Dutch peasant life and the ridiculed or pestered woman transcended his media and reappeared frequently in his work. In this image and A Man Caressing the Young Hostess (1965.634), unidealized drunkards lecherously interact with a young inn hostess. These prints feature the same wooden bench, barrel, and window closure, and the figures are in almost identical positions. The woman’s expression, however, varies from a flirtatious response to the man’s advances in A Man Caressing the Young Hostess to a less amused, dismissive reaction in The Young Innkeeper.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
