Term: Genre Paintings

A style of painting depicting ordinary people engaged in common activities from everyday life. The scenes are depicted in a realistic manner with figures to whom no identity can be attached. Genre paintings are often associated with 17th-century Dutch and Flemish artists such as Jan Steen, Gerard Terborch, Adriaen van Ostade, and Johannes Vermeer. Because of their familiar subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the middle class.

The term "genre" is also used to describe a hierarchy of painting types used to classify art (for example, landscape, still life, portrait, and so forth). Genre painting is one of the painting types used in most genre classification schemes.