From the museum website
The working lives of farmers and laborers, the patterns of courtship between men and women, the figures of mothers and children and family life are the ordinary everyday lives captured in “genre painting.” This exhibition traces the full development of the diversity of European genre painting, beginning with images of ancient Egypt and Grecian works and traversing the artistic territory from the beginning of the 16th century to the mid-19th century in approximately 80 paintings. Vermeer, representative of 17th century Holland’s height of mature painting, will have his “The Astronomer” shown, the first time it has been exhibited in Japan.