Adriaen Brouwer painted "Peasants Smoking and Drinking" on a small wood panel in the Netherlands, sometime in the 1620s or 30s. Brouwer specialized in genre scenes of everyday life, particularly those of the lower classes. Paintings like this one, depicting peasants drinking, smoking, and generally making merry, were popular in the Netherlands at the time. But they weren't always straightforward celebrations of peasant life, and are better understood in the context of the growing urbanization. Such paintings were often commissioned by wealthier city dwellers, who held contradictory ideas of the rural folk; they were seen as simple, honest, and virtuous, but also as crude, boorish, and prone to vice. This painting likely appealed to the latter stereotype. The social historian can bring depth to our understanding of paintings like this. By consulting period documents we can learn about class relations, the rise of cities, and the cultural values of the Netherlands.