Most people probably know Wilhelm Busch as an artist who explored the small weaknesses, idiosyncrasies and malices of human nature with a sharp pen. Throughout his life, Busch struggled with his role as a painter. In addition to numerous landscapes, he also created smaller genre scenes that reveal his admiration for the Dutch school. It is the rural environments that were the subject of his mostly small-format oil paintings. For his genre scenes, he found inspiration in Dutch art of the 17th century, above all in the work of Adriaen van Ostade and Adriaen Brouwer. Such genre scenes allow for a depiction of the simple and the humble as deeply human aspects. In Busch's graphic-narrative work, he explored the depth of the mundane. The tonality of his painting and the spontaneous brushstroke create a dense atmosphere that one would usually not expect from such small formats. The dark tonality in particular reveals that this is not a humorous scenes, but that motif and formal execution aim at the humanity of the viewer, as can be found in the great Dutch masters. [KT]