These scenes of everyday life are from the latter part of the 17th century when painting in the Netherlands become generally more refined. Johannes Vermeer’s A Young Woman seated at a Virginal exemplifies the taste for images of elegant domesticity. Gerard ter Borch depicted the subtle interactions of expensively dressed young people, drinking together, making music and courting. Often a moral message was disguised within such pictures. The apparently cheerful and disorderly scenes by Jan Steen, for example, comment on the folly of human behaviour.

In the university town of Leiden, Rembrandt’s pupil Gerrit Dou established the tradition of the so-called fijnschilders (literally meaning ‘fine painters’). Their name comes from the delicate finish they achieved, sometimes with surfaces that appear to be enamelled or polished. Usually depicting everyday subjects, such works by Dou and his followers sold for high prices.