Genre painting (from French 'genre': kind or type) refers to works depicting scenes of everyday domestic, rural, tavern or market life — as distinct from history painting (mythological or historical scenes), portrait painting, landscape or still life. In the hierarchy of subjects established by academic theory, genre occupied a relatively low position — yet in the Dutch Golden Age it produced the greatest domestic paintings in Western art. Jan Steen's rowdy taverns, Pieter de Hooch's orderly courtyards, and above all Vermeer's utterly still interiors of women reading, pouring milk or playing instruments — these transformed the unremarkable activities of ordinary life into occasions for meditation. The term 'genre painting' was not used contemporaneously; it emerged in the 18th century as a retrospective classification for works that refused to claim grand subjects.