Jan Steen

Steen, Jan Havicksz

Dutch, 1625/1626 - 1679

Jan Steen was born in Leiden, where his father was a brewer and grain merchant. The date of his birth is not known, but the artist was twenty years old when he enrolled at the University of Leiden in 1646. Two years later he is recorded as one of the founding members of Leiden’s newly formed Saint Luke’s Guild. Arnold Houbraken states that Steen’s artistic education came from Goyen, Jan van, the Leiden-born landscape painter who had settled in The Hague. According to Jacob Campo Weyerman, Steen had previously studied with Nicolaes Knüpfer (c. 1603–1655) in Utrecht and with Ostade, Adriaen van in Haarlem.

Steen married Van Goyen’s daughter Margaretha in September 1649, and he appears to have remained in The Hague until 1654. In that year he is recorded on several occasions back in Leiden. From 1654 until 1657 Steen’s father leased a Delft brewery by the name of “The Snake” on his son’s behalf, and it seems that the artist lived in Delft during those years. From 1656 to 1660 Steen lived at Warmond, a small town near Leiden. The increased interest in still life details and careful finish of the paintings he produced during this period suggest his contact with the work of the Leiden fijnschilders (fine painters).

By 1661 Steen had moved to Haarlem, where he entered the Saint Luke’s Guild in that year. During the nine years he spent in Haarlem, Steen created many of his greatest paintings, including a number of large, complex scenes of families and merrymakers containing witty evocations of proverbs, emblems, or other moralizing messages. His pictures, which are marked by a sophisticated use of contemporary literature and popular theater, often depict characters from both the Italian commedia dell’arte and the native Dutch rederijkerskamers (rhetoricians’ chambers), although Steen was not a rhetorician himself. In addition to genre subjects, he depicted historical and religious subjects during the 1660s and 1670s. He remained a Catholic all his life.

In 1670, one year after the death of his wife, Steen moved to Leiden, having inherited his father’s house. Two years later, he received a license to open an inn, a fact that has contributed to his traditional reputation as a dissolute drunkard. Although he sometimes included his self-portrait in this guise in scenes of apparent immorality and chaos, there is no incriminating evidence—beyond his possession of an acute sense of humor—to suggest that his real life mirrored his art.

In 1673 Steen married Marije Herculens van Egmont, who survived him by eight years. In 1674 he was elected deken of the Leiden guild, having served as an officer at the rank of hoofdman for the previous three years. There is no record of his having had any pupils, although a number of artists, notably Richard Brakenburg (1650–1702), imitated his style.

Explore Selected Works

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.
Jan Steen, Ascagnes and Lucelle (The Music Lesson), 1667, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.136.45

Ascagnes and Lucelle (The Music Lesson)

Jan Steen · 1667 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.136.45

More than a dozen light-skinned men, women, and children eat, drink, talk, and make music around a dancing couple under an arbor in this horizontal painting. Most of the people are dressed in muted tones of green, gray, and black. The patio-like space is enclosed by a railing along the back and a half wall to our right. Sage-green vines and leaves covering the roof-like trellis hang down. Ten men and women sit or stand closely around a long table along the left, next to the exterior wall of a red brick building. A woman sitting in a wooden chair at the end of the table closest to us wears a flax-yellow gown with a wide white collar and a starched white cap. She smiles up at the child she braces in her lap. The child stands and holds a toy in both hands and looks over one shoulder to our right. The child wears a carrot-orange gown with a white pinafore. Two men lean out of open windows at the far end of the brick building, and the people along the table drink, smile, or look on as a man in the center leads a woman by the hand to an open spot under the arbor. He wears a charcoal-gray suit, and a muted pink cap is pulled low over his eyes. He has a long, hooked nose, and light glints off teeth in his smiling mouth. The woman is pulled behind the man, so she stands flat-footed to our left of him. She faces our right but turns to looks at us from the corners of her dark eyes. Her light brown hair is gathered at the back of her head under a pearl-lined covering. She wears a dusty rose-pink gown with a sheer black shawl around her shoulders and white apron at her waist. Beyond the back rail, a man smiles widely as he balances a covered basket containing a gray chicken with one hand on his head. Nearby, a boy on our side of the rail talks with a little girl across the railing, who smiles back. Two men and a woman wearing a black head covering talk a short distance away. Close to us, a man, woman, and child in the lower right corner sit near two young men perched on the half wall, one playing a violin and the other a flute. A gleaming pewter ewer, a wooden barrel with a square opening, a white pipe, a terracotta bowl, broken eggs, a spoon, and an overturned pail of flowers lie scattered across the foreground of the patio. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “JSteen. 1663,” with the J and S overlapping.
Jan Steen, The Dancing Couple, 1663, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.81

The Dancing Couple

Jan Steen · 1663 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.9.81

Bibliography

1729

  • Weyerman, J. C. De levens beschryvingen der nederlandsche konstschildrs en konstschilderessen. 4 vols. The Hague, 1729-1769: 2:348.

1753

  • Houbraken, Arnold. De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen. 3 vols. in 1. The Hague, 1753 (Reprint: Amsterdam, 1976): 1:374; 2:245; 3:7, 12-30.

1829

  • Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829-1842: 4(1833):xv-xx, 1-69; 9(1842):473.

1907

  • 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(1907):1-252.

1958

  • Nieuwenhuis, Domela, Peder Niels Hjalmar, and Anton van Duinkerken. Jan Steen. Exh. cat. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1958.

1975

  • Gudlaugsson, Sturla. The Comedians in the Work of Jan Steen and his Contemporaries. Translated by James Brockway and Patricia Wardle from 1945 ed. Soest, 1975.

1976

  • Vries, Lyckle de. Jan Steen: De schilderende Uilenspiegel. De Grote Meesters. Amsterdam, 1976.

1977

  • Kirschenbaum, Baruch D. The Religious and Historical Paintings of Jan Steen. New York, 1977.

  • Vries, Lyckle de. "Jan Steen, 'de kluchtschilder'." Ph.D. dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit, Groningen, 1977.

1982

  • Sutton, Peter C. "The Life and Art of Jan Steen." Special edition of Bulletin of the Philadelphia Museum of Art 78, no. 337-338 (Winter-Spring 1982/1983: 3-63.

1983

  • Sutton, Peter C. Jan Steen: Comedy and Admonition. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 1983.

1984

  • Sutton, Peter C. Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting. Edited by Jane Iandola Watkins. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; Royal Academy of Arts, London. Philadelphia, 1984: 307-325.

1991

  • MacLaren, Neil. The Dutch School, 1600-1900. Revised and expanded by Christopher Brown. 2 vols. National Gallery Catalogues. London, 1991: 1:423-424.

1995

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 363.

1996

  • Bok, Marten, Jan. "The Artist's Life." In Chapman, H. Perry, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. Jan Steen, painter and storyteller. Edited by Guido Jansen. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Washington, 1996: 25-37.

2005

  • Kloek, Wouter Th. Jan Steen (1626-1679). Rijksmuseum dossiers. Zwolle, 2005.

2006

  • Grijzenhout, Frans, and Niek C. F. van Sas. The Burgher of Delft: a painting by Jan Steen. Amsterdam, 2006.