Genre-painting.

Genre-painting. Genre (French, from the Latin genus, 'a kind') is a term in art which was originally used to indicate simply any class or kind of painting, and was always accompanied by a distinctive adjective or epithet, as genre historique, 'historical painting,' genre du paysage, 'landscape-painting.' The phrase genre or genre-painting, however, has now come to be applied to scenes from familiar or rustic life, to all figure-pictures which, from the homeliness of their subjects, do not attain to the dignity of 'historical' art. Genre-painting, in its most typical development, may be studied in the interiors and rustic subjects of such Dutch figure-painters as Teniers, Ostade, De Hooch, Jan Steen, and Terburg. In France the most eminent genre-painters were Watteau, Lancret, Greuze, and Chardin; while in England the works of Hogarth, Wilkie, Mulready, and the elder Leslie may be mentioned as belonging to this class.