Terms and conditions of use
The shrimp seller
1776
- Medium
- oil on wood panel
- Measurements
- 29.9 × 24.6 cm
- Place/s of Execution
- The Hague, the Netherlands
- Inscription
- inscribed in black paint l.l.: Maria M. La Fargúe / f: 1776.
- Accession Number
- 2017.454
- Department
- International Painting
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by The Andrew & Geraldine Buxton Foundation, 2017 - Gallery location
- 17th Century & Flemish Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International - About this work
-
This enchanting little panel belongs to a category of patriotic eighteenth-century Dutch painting that celebrates modern Dutch society while harking back to the glories of the seventeenth century. Maria Margaretha La Fargue specialised in such genre scenes that evoked the prosperity and ease of life in The Hague. A cheerful vendor here offers her wares of freshly cooked shrimp to the female occupants of an affluent household. This seafood, a traditional symbol of wealth and gluttony in Dutch morality still lifes, is ignored by a well-fed cat who prefers to play idly with an insect on the marble floor.
- Subjects (general)
- Cityscapes Daily Life Human Figures
- Subjects (specific)
- children (people by age group) domesticity fishmongers Hague, The (inhabited place) Netherlands (nation) peddlers shrimp women (female humans)
