1600–1700

This group of three figures undoubtedly shows people from a peasant environment, perhaps from the same family: an elderly father, his wife and son. The old man in the easy chair is being served a meal, he is using a cask as a table. Both as regards the expressions on the faces of the figures and their gestures the whole picture is an emphatic, unsentimental caricature; it looks as if the old man is pouring from the jug without realising that he has not got a cup in his hand. Although the picture shows a peasant environment with the comical satire which was characteristic of the European aristocracy in the 17th century and also later, it would nevertheless be difficult to find another which portrays the social and cultural backwardness and apathy which were characteristic of the lower peasant strata so convincingly.

The attribution of this painting to Almanach, a suggestion made orally by Anica Cevc, can also be accepted in view of the positive comparison with Young Man with a Turkey, which the 1731 inventory of the collection of Marx Anton of Billichgrätz mentions as Almanach’s work. It should probably be dated to the time after Card Players I. Mention should be made of the similarity to the work of certain Lombard painters of the late 17th and early 18th centuries: not so much to Giacomo Ceruti as to Giacomo Francesco Cipper, called il Todeschini. It should also be noted that there is a coincidental, but no less striking similarity of the woman with the figures on the paintings of the Seville school, for example on the paintings of Antonio Puga.

Restored: 1981, Kemal Selmanović.
Provenance: Strahl collection, Stara Loka, until 1930; Narodni muzej, Ljubljana, from 1930 onwards, Inv. No. 9897 (Beggars); Narodna galerija, Ljubljana, since 1946.
Exhibitions: 1983, Ljubljana, No. 92; 1993, Székesfehérvár, No. C144; 1994, Paris, No. 100; Brescia, 1998, No. 89.
Lit.: Zeri [& Rozman] 1983, pp. 162–163, Cat. No. 92, Fig. 91; Metamorphosis 1993, p. 310, Cat. and Fig. No. C 144; Paysages 1994, p. 126, Cat. No. 100 (text Patric Le Chanu); Porzio 1998, pp. 37, 217, 422–425, 473, Cat. No. 89, Fig. on p. 218.