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Steen was a storyteller with a passion for drawing moral conclusions in his numerous pictures based on the Scripture, old proverbs, aphorisms, and emblems. Much of Steen's moralizing is based upon familiar platitudes. 'Easy come, easy go' was a favourite. Here, Steen has depicted the proverb 'As the old sing, so pipe the young', meaning that a bad example leads to bad conduct. He frequently includes an inscription in his paintings to make his meaning clear. Many of his exuberant pictures of families around a festive table, where grown-ups, children, and animals make an ingenious hotch-potch, are designed to illustrate well-known proverbs. This is the subject of the group eating, making music, drinking, smoking, laughing and shouting in this picture at the Mauritshuis.
Here Steen introduced himself giving a boy a a pipe, and there have been attempts to identify three generations of his family in the painting. The old woman sings the song written on the sheet of paper she holds:
"As we sing you'll have to chirrup, / It's a law the whole world knows. / I lead, all follow suit, / From baby to centenarian."
In this major work, which is large in size and broader in execution than most, an abundance of animating details illustrate the obvious moral. It was executed when Steen was in Haarlem and had the opportunity to study at firsthand a number of Frans Hals's pictures. The tonality is light, and the dominant hues are Steen's favourite ones: violet, rose, salmon-red, pale yellow, and bluish-green.
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