This work belongs to the so-called peasant interiors, one of the new genres of painting that emerged and developed in Flanders and Holland in the early seventeenth century. In Houbraken and in early inventories they are described as een boertje, (a little peasant) or as toeback rookerchen (tobacco smokers). The consolidation and appreciation of this genre was fostered by the satirical and moralising literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which was in turn rooted in the Kerelslied or fourteenthcentury peasant ballads composed by the knights during the struggles with the peasants. However, the term kerel, which originally denoted the freeman peasant or villager, came to be used to describe the churl, an uncouth, boorish and coarse peasant whose behaviour, dominated by instincts and passions, contrasted with the rules of conduct of the new bourgeois class. This is the type of villager depicted in the peasant interiors that were acquired by the bourgeoisie as a source of entertainment or learning.

Van Ostade`s original -and essential- contribution to the peasant genre consisted in replacing the grotesque and violent scenes of Adriaen Brouwer with pleasant compositions infused with humour, thereby transforming the satirical depiction into a positive portrayal of the peasant class at moments of leisure and amusement. The genre thus acquired a new significance which, in Schnackenburg`s opinion (1981), has its literary parallel in a series of texts that emerged in mid-seventeenth-century Holland in defence of country life.

The scene introduces the viewer into a rustic interior. There, a man rests on a chair with his back to the viewer, an old woman sits with her right arm on a barrel and an open book in her hands, a child leans with his right arm on the old woman`s left leg, and a man stands beside them, laughing while pointing at the pitcher of beer he is holding in his left hand. In older catalogues, this painting appears as the companion piece to the P2122. Like that work, it was also included in the Colección litográfica de los cuadros del rey de España. Since 1942, it has been recorded in the Museum`s catalogues as a signed and dated work, A. v. Ostade 1632. However, neither the signature nor the date can be verified today.

The two scenes share a similar style and technique, although in this one the brushstrokes are more even and the spatial structure more complex. Firstly, the wall here does not occupy the whole of the background, as the upper part of the picture depicts the beams and straw roof, whilst the right-hand side opens out onto another room. This gives the composition greater spatial depth, to which the niche that opens in the middle of the wall also contributes. Nevertheless, the spatial arrangement between the dark foreground and the background still comes across as slightly awkward.

The scene appears to depict the mirth provoked by a humorous comment made by the man with the beer pitcher, perhaps regarding something the old woman has just read out. In the seventeenth century, reading aloud was a common pastime at informal gatherings, both among simple people and the bourgeoisie. If we accept Schnackenburg`s interpretation, Reading Aloud could be explained as a representation of the Sense of Hearing (Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, pp. 308-309).