Look at how much fun they were having even in the seventeenth century, puffing on long pipes (and who knows what they were crumbling inside even back then...) and sipping on tall flutes of good beer, huh, not bad at all for those folks.



Pieter de Hooch, born in Rotterdam on December 20, 1629, was the author of a vast series of charming scenes set in taverns, courtyards, and both humble and luxurious dwellings, all distinguished by a masterful use of perspective and light, thanks also to his long stay in Delft in the Netherlands, the hometown of his contemporary Johannes van der Meer, "Jan" to his friends.

This depiction of a couple smoking a pipe and enjoying a beer is from 1658-1660 and is housed in the Mauritshuis, or "House of Maurice" (uh, just like my real name) in The Hague.