Jan Steen

“ Here was Jan Steen, once a well-to-do jeweller of Winburg, who before war broke out was always immaculately dressed, with ample starched shirt front and bejewelled fingers; there Van Sterck, the learned medico of the same town. Neither had had a change of raiment for months, and both looked correspondingly miserable. Yonder stood Louis Bredon, the dandy of Harrismith, now a veritable scarecrow in trousers made of sacking on which the address of a large milling concern in Johannesburg was branded in staring black letters. ”

“ STEEN, JAN HAVICKSZ (1626–1679) , Dutch subject-painter, was born at Leiden in 1626, the son of a brewer of the place. He studied at Utrecht under Nicolas Knupfer, a German historical painter. Dr. Bode suggests that, before entering Knupfer’s studio, Jan Steen took drawing lessons from Jacob de Wet in Haarlem. He bases his theory on the internal evidence of such, early pictures as the “Market at Leiden” (Staedel Institute, Frankfort) , the “Kermesse” (A. von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, Berlin) , “Calling for the Bride” (Six Collection, Amsterdam) , and “St John’s Sermon” (Dessau Castle) . ”

“ Steen has some hard work before her if the house is to be restored to a Dutch pitch Page 111of cleanliness and order; but how jolly every one is! Jan himself looks just as we should expect.
The triumph of the “Oyster Feast,” on the opposite page, seems to me to be the girl kneeling in the corner. Here is drawing indeed. The charge brought by the mysterious painter in Balzac’s story against Pourbus, that one was unable to walk behind the figure in his picture, could never hold with Jan Steen. His every figure stands out surrounded by atmosphere, and never more so than in the “Oyster Feast”. ”

“ Selina had made him an overcoat of stout bean-sacking and this she tucked under the wagon seat, together with an old black fascinator, for though the September afternoon was white-hot she knew that the evenings were likely to be chilly, once the sun, a great crimson Chinese balloon, had burned itself out in a blaze of flame across the prairie horizon. Selina herself, in a full-skirted black-stuff dress, mounted the wagon agilely, took up the reins, looked down at the boy seated beside her, clucked to the horses. Jan Steen gave vent to a final outraged bellow. ”

“ JAN STEEN Jan Steen was the chameleon of Dutch painting. Besides genre he essayed portraiture and Biblical subjects; alternated between small and large canvases; at one time suggests a recollection of some other artist, by turns Van Ostade, Terborch, Maes, Metsu, Van Mieris, or even{142} Vermeer; at other times is incomparably himself, and still again not infrequently falls below his own standard. He has left more examples than any other genre artist; for dozens mentioned in old catalogues have disappeared, yet still some five hundred survive. ”

“ At The Hague one may also see, whenever the family is not in residence, the collection of Baron Steengracht in one of the ample white mansions on the Vyverberg. Most interesting of the pictures to me are Jan Steen’s family group, which, however, for all its wonderful drawing, is not in his most interesting manner; a very deft Metsu, “The Sick Child”; a horse by Albert Cuyp; a characteristic group of convivial artists by Adrian Brouwer, including Hals, Ostade, Jan Steen and the painter himself; and—best of all—Terburg’s wholly charming “Toilette,” an old woman combing the head of a child. ”

“ The story is perhaps an invention; but a somewhat similar joke is credited to Jan Steen. His commission was the Flood, and his picture when finished consisted of a sheet of water with a Dutch cheese in the midst bearing the arms of Leyden. The cheese and the arms, he pointed out, proved that people had been on the earth; as for Noah and the ark, they were out of the picture.
Jan Steen’s picture of “A Quaker’s Funeral” I have Page 113not seen, but according to Pilkington it is impossible to behold it and refrain from laughter. The subject does not strike one as being in itself mirthful. ”

“ All this shows the influence of Van Mieris, who was a friend of Steen and who spent many hours in his tavern at Leyden.
Reynolds's Appreciation of Jan Steen.—Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was so delighted with the Steens he saw in Holland, wrote the following appreciative criticism of the artist:
"Jan Steen has a strong manly style of painting, which might become even the design of Raffaelle, and he has shown the greatest skill in composition and management of light and shadow as well as great truth in the expression and character of his figures." ”

“ For the first few days following the funeral one or another of the neighbouring farmers drove the DeJong team to market, aided the blundering Jan in the fields. But each had his hands full with his own farm work. On the fifth day Jan Steen had to take the garden truck to Chicago, though not without many misgivings on Selina’s part, all of which were realized when he returned late next day with half the load still on his wagon and a sum of money representing exactly zero in profits. The wilted left-over vegetables were dumped behind the barn to be used later as fertilizer. ”

“ They see I was a new hand and time I got the animals stabled and come back they had the wagon crowded out, like.”
Selina was standing in the kitchen doorway, Jan in the yard with the team. She turned her face toward the fields. An observant person (Jan Steen was not one of these) would have noted the singularly determined and clear-cut jaw-line of this drably calicoed farm woman. ”

“ Another old farm-servant is also laughing as he regards his young mistress; another person, who carries a hen under his left arm and her brood of chickens in a basket, is one of those dumpy and deformed creatures that Jan Steen likes to paint. Burger considers the head of the man with the basket of eggs is one of the most wonderful heads that were ever painted by Jan Steen or any of the Dutch Little Masters. ”

“ No subject was more congenial to the Dutch painters than scenes of home life and familiar interiors. Not only were Jan Steen, Teniers, Dou, Metsu and others of like rank attracted to the home, but an army of 255mediocre masters devoted their talents to this subject. ”

“ It follows that these pictures of coarse, vulgar people engaged in rude amusements cannot be beautiful; but they are oftentimes wonderful. Among the most noted names in this kind of painting are those of Adrian Brauwer, the Van Ostades, the Teniers, and Jan Steen. Most of these artists executed small pictures only. I shall speak particularly of but one of these Dutch genre painters—David Teniers the younger (1610-1694) , who became the greatest painter of his time of scenes from common life. ”

“ A like satirical intent may be found in Jan Steen's picture (Fig. 2) , although the scene is treated less fancifully. The operator may have been a well-known man; he does not operate in a public place, but at home, in a comfortable Dutch interior; but he is not without skillful accomplices—the matron, his habitual assistant, with her cunning expression, and the urchin who laughs at the humbug of the thing, as he passes the pebbles which the crafty charlatan causes to roll over the neck of the suffering patient. ”

“ Artists' Portraits of Themselves.—Though not so great in the line of painters' portraits of themselves as the Uffizi, the Rijks possesses a good number of men who thought they saw themselves as others saw them, or at any rate, as they wished posterity to know them. Among these are Jan Steen, Gerrit Dou, Ferdinand Bol, Honthorst, Ter Borch, and L. Bakhuysen. ”

“ A man and woman are dancing in a street, the former being dressed as a savage and carrying a club; an individual follows them with a "rommel pot." In the foreground we see a dog, and a man in a blue toga, holding a sword and an imperial globe in his hands. Behind these persons a house is visible, the doors and windows of which are filled with people. The picture is dated 1720.
Jan Steen's Feast of St. Nicholas.—Turning now to humorous pictures, Jan Steen affords two. The Feast of St. Nicholas differs slightly from the one in the Rijks, and represents the painter's family. ”

“ At Haarlem, where he lived for a while, he worked in Frans Page 254Hals’ studio, and then he settled down at Deventer, a few miles south of Zwolle, married, and became in time Burgomaster of the town. He died at Deventer in 1681. Zwolle has none of his pictures, and does not appear to value his memory. Nor does Deventer. How Terburg looked as Burgomaster of Deventer is seen in his portrait of himself in the Mauritshuis at The Hague. It was not often that the great Dutch painters rose to civic eminence. Rembrandt became a bankrupt, Frans Hals was on the rates, Jan Steen drank all his earnings. ”

“ It is not that the Dutch Page 105no longer drink, but that they now do it with more privacy.
The travelling temples reserved for the honour of poffertjes and wafelen are the most noticeable features of any Kermis. They are divided, quite like restaurants, into little cubicles for separate parties. Flowers and ferns make them gay; the waiters may even wear evening dress, but this is a refinement which would have annoyed Jan Steen; on the tables is white American cloth ”

“ We wish that we could describe the Jan Steens, the Dous, the Mierises, and other sterling Dutch painters. There is the gallery of Dutch and Flemish primitives about which a volume might be written; their emaciated music appeals. In expressiveness the later men did not excel them. The newest acquisition, not mentioned in the catalogue supplements, is the work of an unknown seventeenth-century master, possibly Spanish, though the figures, background, and accessories are Dutch. Two old men, their heads bowed, sit at table. Across their knees are napkins. The white is from a Spanish palette. ”

“ I’m a-sitting on him now to keep him down; as, though he’s sleepin’, he tries to start up on us every minute. By Jingo! there he goes again!”
“He vas bat mans,” observed Jan Steenbock, helping to hold down the struggling skipper, whose fits of delirium still came back every now and again. “He vas vool of mischiefs and ze rhoom! Joost now, he vas dink dat he vas talk to ze boocaneer cap’en, and dat he vas show him dat dreazure dat vas accurst, and he vas dink he vinds it, and dat I vas shteal hims avay.”
“I’m jiggered!” ejaculated Hiram, in surprise. ”

“ Jan Steenbock’s voice from the poop at this juncture recalled my wandering and wondering imagination to the more prosaic and practical realities of our situation, which quickly put to flight the ghostly fancies that had previously crowded thick and fast on my mind.
“Vo’c’s’le ahoy!” shouted the second-mate, his deep, manly tones at once putting fresh courage into all of us, and making the men pull themselves together and start up eager for action, abandoning all their craven fears. “How vas it mit yous vorvarts! Ze sheep, I zink, vas in ze deep vater astern.” ”

“ Nothing could be more commonplace or characterless in color and form than Steen's rendering of the dinner at Emmaus. Occasionally, however, he is equally without inspiration in his lustiest subjects. In the "Fröhliche Heimkehr" at Amsterdam, a merry enough scene of people returning from a boatride in high spirits, there is neither charm of color (save in the yellow jacket of a girl who leans over the side of the boat) nor subtlety of characterization. ”

“ His heart pounded, his tongue hung far out of his mouth, he plunged his nose into the soft, cold drifts, sometimes stopping to take a big bite, then with yelps of joy he darted on.
And high above the steep trail rose the sharp peaks that shadowed the hundreds of deep gullies: places where the snow never melted, even in summer. And Prince Jan knew that he was following once more the path that his forefathers had trodden. ”

“ When we say that this picture makes you burst into a shout of laughter, we have said all that need be said. This Steen is, after Rembrandt, the most original of the Dutch figure-painters; - he is one of the few artists who, once known, whether we class him as great, or place him only in the second rank, remains a fixture in our minds for ever. After having seen his pictures, you cannot meet a drunken man, a buffoon, a cripple, a dwarf, a deformed visage, a ridiculous grimace, a grotesque attitude, without instantly remembering one of his figures. ”

“ Steen’s treatment of Biblical, as of occasional mythological, subjects was purely in the vein of genre; not, however, with any resort to emotional or dramatic appeal, as in the case of Rembrandt. In translating the old scene into the vernacular of Dutch middle-class or low-class life, Steen preserves nothing of its religious significance, or even of its epic dignity. The theme with him becomes simply a vehicle for characterization and possible humor. Thus, in The Marriage at Cana, Christ is standing at the table in the act of blessing a Dutch wedding-party, but all this is in the background. ”

“ Jan Steyn was, until the verge of old age, one of those restless frontier-men who are never content to settle down entirely to the pastoral life of the average Dutch farmer. He was a great hunter, and during the first ten years of his career beyond the Vaal he found almost as much occupation as he needed within the boundaries of the newly formed republic. But after that time elephants began to grow scarce within the Transvaal, and the ivory-hunters had to push their way farther afield. Moselikatse’s country—which we now call Matabeleland—was a sealed book for the Boers ”