THE INN JAN STEEN
HAGUE MUSEUM
by hearsay information from a painter, Carel de Moor, led this story-monger into much tittle-tattle about the artist’s reckless habits. To-day, by the best authorities, this view of Steen is discredited. It is, however, quite clear that he was often in desperate states; for example, in the February after his first wife’s death an apothecary seized his goods and sold his pictures to satisfy a debt of ten florins! But the reason was not idleness, for he was the most prolific painter of his day; it is to be found in the miserable price for which he had to sell his work. No wonder he tried to eke out his finances by keeping a brewery, which, by the way, was a privilege specially granted at that time only to a few families of particular respectability. As to the café, since he had to turn to trade, he naturally adopted the one with which his family had been connected; the disgrace, if there were any, not being his, but the public’s, who paid him better for drinks than for his pictures.
So far as the dates on his pictures show, his period of production lasted for twenty-five years, from 1653 to 1678, so that his output averaged more than twenty pictures a year. The best period may probably be reckoned during the years from 1654 to 1669, which covered his second sojourn in Leyden and his visit to Haarlem. His family was growing up around him, and the children from year to year figure in his pictures, and his handsome wife, Margaret, appears as a center of kindliness and comfort, while his own person often adds the note of jollity. To these pleasant times belong the incomparable “family scenes”—A Homely Scene, The Feast of St. Nicholas, and The Happy Family of the Rijks Museum; The Christening Party of the Berlin Gallery; While the Old Ones Sing the Young Ones Pipe of the Hague Gallery; and the Cassel Gallery’s Twelfth Night, where Margaret appears for the last time, since the picture was painted in the year of her death.
These and other group-pictures, such as The Prince’s Birthday of the Rijks Museum, are works of genius, unique in painting. For they are not constructed according to the methods of the schools, but are the products of a natural gift of seeing and rendering naturally a glimpse of busy life. Yet with a tact that avoids confusion; places everything in its own plane of space with admirable precision and propriety; leaves no intervals of uncertainty or obscurity; but secures to the whole an artistic reasonableness and completeness; and all this with an art that conceals art, and makes the scene appear to be one of complete naturalness. No other artist has ever reconciled nature and art quite so happily; and when one passes from the technical appreciation to a study of the varieties of character, depicted in the personages of all ages from the baby to the grandparents, and notes the mingling of humor and tenderness in the sentiment and the embracing large-heartedness that has inspired the whole, it is to marvel at and rejoice in the uniqueness of Steen’s genius.
Then, by way of contrast, mark his treatment of a subject in which only a few persons figure. To myself his series of medical visits presents perhaps the most charming example of this concentrated phase of his art. Witness The Sick Lady of the Rijks Museum, where the young woman sits with her head supported by a pillow, its whiteness against the pallor of her face, while the doctor stands counting her pulse. It is a masterpiece of tender characterization, for here the physician also is gentle and solicitous. However, he is not so in A Doctor Visiting a Sick Young Woman (No. 166) of the Hague Gallery. There he is boorish in appearance and suggests ignorance; in rough contrast to the pathetically fragile little lady, lying in bed and so ruefully gazing at the medicine-glass in the maid’s hand. The picture is not dated, but I wonder if it was painted after the artist’s rude experience with the apothecary who sold him up for ten florins! Again, in The Doctor’s Visit of the National Gallery, the man presents a different trait of behavior. It is not tenderness toward a delicate young thing as in the Amsterdam picture, but respectful solicitude toward an older woman, who, by the way, reminds one of Steen’s wife, Margaret. She is dressed in a jacket of old rose, edged with fur, and a silvery-blue skirt, while the doctor wears a suit of black with olive velvet sleeves. In the Amsterdam picture his black costume is relieved by a silk cloak of ashy brown, while the young woman is in pearly-gray satin, trimmed with white fur, a peep of blue slipper appearing from beneath the skirt. In fact, the color of these pictures is exceedingly choice; differing from the richness and liveliness of the family groups; corresponding in its subtle delicacy to the delicate pointedness of the characterization that is not without a certain dry flavor of wit.
It is between these two extremes of generous freedom and highly wrought restraint that the pendulum of Steen’s art swings, with such wealth of variety that it is impossible to specialize further. However, a word or two must be said in conclusion about his treatment of Biblical subjects, of which The Marriage at Cana and The Expulsion of Hagar, both in the Dresden Gallery, may be cited as typical examples.
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. The salient features of the scene are occurring in the foreground, where a fat cellarer hands a glass of wine to a fiddler, and a slattern woman leans against a cask, giving a drink to a boy. In The Expulsion of Hagar, Sarah sits inside the door, “examining” the little Isaac’s head; Hagar weeps as Abraham sadly dismisses her: while Ishmael strings his bow, two spaniels are catching fleas, and sheep, cows, and poultry are scattered through the yard. Meanwhile, though the pictures make no appeal to the spiritual imagination, the sensuous imagination may be stimulated by the choiceness of their charm of color. Perhaps, however, if one wishes to epitomize Steen’s attitude toward the subjects he took from the Bible and the classics, one may best compare his rendering of The Disciples at Emmaus (Rijks Museum) with Rembrandt’s treatment of the same subject in the Louvre. Instead of Christ being the pathetic center of divine illumination, as in the latter picture, Steen has placed Him in the shadow of the background, leaving the room, while the disciples, attended by a serving-woman, are gazing disconsolately at the table, which is garnished with—of all imaginably incongruous things—a lemon.