Paintings of subjects from everyday life, usually small in scale. Developed particularly in Holland in seventeenth century, most typically with scenes of peasant life or drinking in taverns. In Britain Hogarth's Modern Moral Subjects were a special kind of genre, in their frankness and often biting social satire. Simpler genre painting emerged in later eighteenth century in for example G Morland, H Morland, and Wheatley. Became hugely popular in Victorian age following success of brilliantly skilled but deeply sentimental work of Wilkie. Genre painting is one of the five genres, or types of painting, established in the seventeenth century.