856. THE MUSIC-MASTER.
Jan Steen (Dutch: 1626-1679).
It is in the collections of Holland, and especially in the Museum of Amsterdam, that the best works of this remarkable painter are to be seen—a painter whose talent and occasional grace made Reynolds name him in the same breath with Raphael, and who has by other critics been called the Molière of painting. This latter comparison happily expresses the dramatic and intellectual quality of Steen's best works. He drew not merely Dutch life, but human nature. He depicts the comedy of human life, for the most part, in a spirit of genial toleration, but sometimes with touches of almost Hogarthian satire. With regard to technical qualities, his best works are admirable for their skilful composition, brilliant touch, and harmonious colouring. "Steen when it pleased him was an artist of great ability. Unfortunately it did not always please him to be so, and then his colour became blurred, his execution trivial, and the general aspect of his figures heavy and monotonous; but whenever he exerts himself he becomes once more and remains a great master. It is the more astonishing to find these defects, as they are peculiar neither to the beginning nor to the end of his career, and therefore cannot be attributed to a hard apprenticeship or premature decay. They are to be explained by the irregular life which the painter led" (Havard). The number of his works, however,—of which more than 500 have been catalogued—seem to negative the stories in which some biographers accept of Steen's drunken and dissolute life. He was the son of a brewer and was born at Leyden. He first studied under a German painter, Knüpfer, at Utrecht; afterwards with Adrian van Ostade, and Jan van Goyen whose daughter he married in 1649. In the previous year he had joined the Painters' Guild of Haarlem. That he was improvident is proved by records of executions for debt which have been discovered in the archives of that town. His pictures must have fetched small prices, for he contracted to pay the year's rent of his house for 1666-67 with three portraits "painted as well as he was able," the rent being 29 florins. In 1669 his wife and his father died, and Steen, who is supposed to have resided for some years at the Hague, returned to Leyden and opened a tavern, and for the rest of his life combined the businesses of painter and publican.
A work of some humour. The music-master is sadly bored with the exercises of his pupil at the harpsichord, but his disgust is fully shared by the young brother whose turn is to come next, and who is bringing a lute into the room. The picture is signed on the harpsichord.