Quast, Pieter

Quast, Pieter (b ?Amsterdam, c.1606; bur. Amsterdam, 29 May 1647).
Dutch painter and draughtsman, active in Amsterdam and The Hague. He is best known for peasant genre scenes in the manner of Brouwer and Adriaen van Ostade, but he also painted more refined types in ‘merry companies’, as well as theatrical subjects (which are fairly rare in Dutch art). Sometimes he combined elegant and peasant types in the same picture (A Man and Woman in a Stableyard, NG, London). In addition to paintings he made finished drawings, presumably for sale—to be used as amusing and cheap decorations for taverns and homes (similar sheets hang in many of the interiors painted by 17th-century Dutch artists). His work has a personal feeling of caricature or exaggeration. It is often of high quality, but he died in poverty.