The old folks sing, the young folk chirp

Here we see a family concert. A man is playing bagpipes, two young children, one on its mother’s lap, are playing the flute. Two old people, a man and a woman, are singing. They are all seated around a laid table. The greyhound is listening with its ears cocked. In the top of the cartouche a proverb can be read, which roughly means ‘The older people set the example, the children follow them’. The old man is probably the painter Adam Van Noort, Jordaens’s teacher and father-in-law. The bagpipe player may be Jordaens himself, but that is not certain. The painting that Jordaens created in 1638 is in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The representation was very popular in Flanders until well into the 20th century.