KALF, Willem
(b. 1619, Rotterdam, d. 1693, Amsterdam)

Interior of a Kitchen

1642-44
Oil on wood, 27 x 32 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This type of peasant interiors was a speciality of the Rotterdam painters Pieter de Bloot, Herman Saftleven and Hendrick Sorgh. Kalf appears to have painted peasant interiors only during the first half of the 1640s, when he was living in Paris. He probably sold his Parisian products through a local dealer, to mostly middle-class buyers.