Adriaen Brouwer - The smokers - Public domain dedication. Metropolitan Museum of Art image.

Adriaen Brouwer (1605–1638) was a Flemish painter active in Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the first half of the 17th century. Brouwer was an important innovator of genre painting through his vivid depictions of peasants, soldiers, and other 'lower class' individuals engaged in drinking, smoking, card or dice playing, fighting, music-making etc. in taverns or rural settings. Brouwer contributed to the development of the genre of cronies, i.e. head or facial studies, which investigate varieties of expression. In his final year, he produced a few landscapes of tragic intensity. Brouwer's work had an important influence on the next generation of Flemish and Dutch genre painters.