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This well-characterized figure - like many similar painting with a single half-figure - seems to be a detail, an elementary unit of a genre painting.
A man absorbed in the task of sharpening a quill is the subject of this excellent character study by Adriaen van Ostade, sometimes known as "the peasant Rembrandt." This is a genre picture in the same tradition as that by Terbrugghen showing a boy similarly engrossed in the task of lighting his pipe. This type of composition featuring only one figure, and usually only a part of that figure, is the simplest form of the genre: it would be impossible to depict a more limited aspect of the everyday movements of life.
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