Ascagnes and Lucelle (The Music Lesson)

1667

Jan Steen

Painter, Dutch, 1625/1626 - 1679

A woman playing a lute sits next to a table, on which a man perches and leans toward her in this vertical painting. Two people look on from the background. All the people have pale skin. The table is covered by cloth patterned in brick red, fawn brown, and black, and it extends off the right edge of the painting. The woman sits along the narrow end of the table to our left of center. Her body faces us as she holds the lute in her lap, one foot resting on a small wooden box. Her left elbow, to our right, is propped on the table to hold the neck of the lute. Her curly, blond hair is pulled back under a string of pearls and a fuzzy salmon-pink cap, or a feather, covers the back of her head. The bodice and puffy, elbow-length sleeves of her gown have cream-white and peach-colored stripes, and the ivory-white satin skirt falls to her feet. She wears a thin gold necklace and pearl earrings. With lips parted, she turns her face up to look at the cleanshaven man sitting on the table next to her. The man’s brown curls fall loosely over his shoulders. A long, wide white collar hangs down the front of his mustard-brown jacket. The voluminous white shirt he wears underneath shows where the jacket is unbuttoned near his waist and at his cuffs. He wears thigh-length, red pantaloons and close-fitting tan leggings. Baggy white socks hang around his ankles, and his brown shoes are tied with laces. A wooden flute sticks out of the pocket farther from the woman, and he holds a tall black hat in his lap, cradled in his left hand, to our right. With his other hand, he reaches to pluck a string near the peg board of the lute. One foot dangles off the edge of the table, and the other is propped on a bench, next to an open book. A glass with a tall stem and rounded bowl sits on the table next to him. Farther back in the shadows of the room, an older woman looks toward the couple, perhaps at the man’s hand on the lute, with her mouth slightly open. A white bonnet frames the woman’s face, and she wears a black hood and cloak over her dark dress. A bed under a box-like canopy sits along the back wall, and is cut off by the left edge of the painting. Dark curtains hanging from the canopy are pulled back to show two white pillows laid one atop the other. Also at the back of the room, to our right, a man peers in through a half-opened, arched door. He wears a conical, black, brimless hat and has a white collar over a dark coat. He looks toward the older woman with one index finger held to the corner of his grinning mouth. The wall is covered with gold-embossed, brown leather squares. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had written in the open book on the bench: “J Steen 1667,” with the letters J and S entwined.

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Jan Steen’s suggestive courtship scene uses music as a metaphor for love and desire. An infatuated young woman strumming her lute has eyes only for her companion, who has reached over to pluck the strings of her instrument while fully returning her gaze. The downturned bed with two pillows and the small sculpture of Cupid above the doorway reinforce the amorous nature of the scene.

Steen’s painting has traditionally been called The Music Lesson, but the presence of the older woman behind the couple and the man standing in the doorway indicate that Steen’s genre painting actually depicts a scene from the tragicomedy Over-gesette Lucelle (translated as Lucelle) by Amsterdam’s famous poet and playwright Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero (1585–1618). Lucelle, the heroine, and Ascagnes, her father’s clerk, are lovers from different social classes trying to overcome the restrictions placed on their love. Steen shows the couple as they pledge their eternal devotion. The inevitable betrayal (by another servant of Lucelle’s father, the man in the doorway) leads to a dramatic finale during which it is discovered that the humbly born—and thus socially ineligible—Ascagnes is actually the son of the king of Poland, and that the poison used by the father on the lovers was in fact only a sleeping potion. The play ends on a happy note with the couple’s wedding.

Steen, one of the most versatile and prolific Dutch painters of the 17th century, often drew inspiration for his scenes of daily life from contemporary literature and popular theater and used characters from both the Italian commedia dell’arte and the native Dutch rederijkerskamers (rhetoricians’ chambers). His vignette from Lucelle is filled with light-hearted innuendo that only a visual storyteller as masterful and humoristic as Steen could convey with such flair.

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.

Scholarly Series:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

Scholarly Article:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Ascagnes and Lucelle (The Music Lesson), 1667

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Possibly (sale, Willem Fabricius, Haarlem, 19 August 1749, no. 26).[1]Richard M. Foster, Clewer Manor, near Windsor, Berkshire;[2] his son, Edmund Benson Foster [1830-1862], Clewer Manor; (Richard Foster's estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 3 June 1876, no. 1, as The Guitar Lesson); Samuel Addington [1806-1886], London; (his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 22 May 1886, no. 107, as The Guitar Lesson); Davis.[3] Sir Julian Goldsmid [1838-1896]; (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 13 June 1896, no. 82, as The Guitar Lesson). (Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris). Baron Michael Ephrussi [1845-1914], Paris; purchased 1900 by William A. Clark [1839-1925], New York; bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] Mariët Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen: Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century, Zwolle, 1997: 98-99, 127 n. 47.
[2] According to William Roberts (Memorials of Christie's: A Record of Art Sales from 1766 to 1896, Volume 1, London, 1897: 253), the Clewer Manor collection was "formed by three generations of the Foster family."
[3] Samuel Addington to Davis is recorded by C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII Jahrhunderts, Esslingen am Neckar, 1907: 96, no. 415. A copy of the sale catalogue in the NGA Library is annotated with the name "Davis" (copy in NGA curatorial files).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1880

  • Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters and by Deceased Masters of the British School. Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, 1880, no. 71, as The Guitar Lesson.

1959

  • Loan Exhibition. Masterpieces of the Corcoran Gallery of Art: A Benefit Exhibition in Honor of the Gallery's Centenary, Corcoran Gallery of Art, unnumbered catalogue, repro., as The Music Lesson.

1989

  • The William A. Clark Collection: Treasures of a Copper King, Yellowstone Art Center, Billings; Montana Historical Society, Helena, 1989, unnumbered checklist, as Music Lesson.

2001

  • Antiquities to Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 2001-2002, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1898

  • Sedelmeyer, Charles. Illustrated Catalogue of 300 Paintings by Old Masters of the Dutch, Flemish, Italian, French, and English schools, being some of the principal pictures which have at various time formed part of the Sedelmeyer Gallery. Paris, 1898: 56, no. 42.

1907

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907-1928: 1:96-97, no. 415.

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 1:108, no. 415.

  • Trautscholdt, E., "Jan Steen." In Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Edited by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950: 31(1937):512, no. 415.

1909

  • Valentiner, Wilhelm R. Catalogue of a collection of paintings by Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. The Hudson-Fulton Celebration 1. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1909: 20, no. 19, repro.

1913

  • Graves, Algernon. A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813-1912. 5 vols. London, 1913-1915: 3(1914):1258.

1925

  • Carroll, Dana H. Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue. Part I. Unpublished manuscript, n.d. (1925): 130, no. 66.

1928

  • Corcoran Gallery of Art. Illustrated Handbook of the W.A. Clark Collection. Washington, 1928: 53.

1932

  • Corcoran Gallery of Art. Illustrated Handbook of the W.A. Clark Collection. Washington, 1932: 56.

1947

  • Gudlaugsson, S.J. "Bredero's Lucelle door eenige zeventiende-eeuwsche meesters uitgebeeld." _Nederlandsch Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek I (1947): 177-195, 191, fig. 5, 195, fig. 15.

1955

  • Breckenridge, James D. A handbook of Dutch and Flemish paintings in the William Andrews Clark collection. Washington, 1955: 46 repro., 47.

1977

  • Lyckle de Vries. _Jan Steen "de kluchtschilder." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Groningen, 1977: 62-63, 165, no. 136.

1978

  • Corcoran Gallery of Art. The William A. Clark Collection: An Exhibition Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Installation of the Clark Collection at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington. Exh. cat. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1978: 51-59, no. 45, repro.

1980

  • Braun, Karel. Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen. Rotterdam, 1980: repro. 125, no. 279, 125.

1986

  • Sutton, Peter C. A Guide to Dutch Art in America. Washington and Grand Rapids, 1986: 300 (repro.)-301, no. 453.

2001

  • Coyle, Laura, and Dare Myers Hartwell, eds. Antiquities to Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, DC, 2001: 23, 68, repro.

2004

  • Eberhart, Marlene L. "Amourous Intentions? The Mythological Flute: A Cultural and Iconographical Study Inspired by the Dayton C. Miller Collection, Library of Congress." Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2004: 136, fig. 25, as Ascagnes and Lucelle, The Music Lesson.

Inscriptions

lower right, on music book, J and S entwined: JSteen / 1667

Wikidata ID

Q46625117

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