Description of the picture:
The yard of the peasant house – David Teniers the Younger. 1640. Oil on canvas. 22.5×16.4
The backyards of a peasant house, fenced by a rickety fence, are depicted. Three peasants – a married couple and an old man – agree on the sale of pigs nearby (it is not by chance that this work was called in the old Hermitage catalogs “Concluded bargaining”)
A picture with such a straightforward plot is exquisite in color, full of the finest shades of various colors. The sky at Teniers is an endless gradation of gray, with nuances of white and blue. The artist conveys the yellowish, brown, greenish tones of the discreet beauty of a small corner of Flemish nature (the landscape is to the right in the depths). In a picturesque manner, the Hermitage painting is close to the works of Teniers performed in the second half of the 1640s, for example, “Landscape with Skittles”."