Other Pictures by Jan Steen, in the Mauritshuis.—In addition to those already mentioned, the Mauritshuis owns A Village Feast, a picture of his first period; the Dentist, who is extracting the tooth of a peasant; A Menagerie; and an Interior known as The Oyster Feast and Jan Steen's Tap-room.
Description of Jan Steen's Tap-room.—The latter is not an inn of the common or rustic type such as is seen in Ostade's or Brouwer's pictures, for the room is furnished in the best style of the period. In it we see about twenty figures in several groups. On the left, an old man is playing with a little child; near him a young girl is kneeling as she cooks the oysters; and in the centre an old man offers an oyster to a seated woman. Children are amusing themselves everywhere: here one is making a cat dance; another is holding a dog; another is carrying a jug and a basket of fruit. At the table on the right and a little back Jan Steen sits playing a lute, a young woman is listening to him, a fat companion with a glass of liquor in his hand is laughing; and in the background are groups of players and smokers. Above and in the foreground a large violet curtain is looped and casts its shadow over a part of the interior. This fine picture is only 2 feet 3 inches by 2 feet 8 inches.
Description of A Menagerie.—A Menagerie is nearly four feet square, and represents the courtyard of a country house—that of William III. at Honsholredijk, which is seen in the distance. Near the stone terrace, beneath the steps of which is a pool, a peacock sits on a branch of an old tree; ducks are swimming in the pool, and hens, turkeys, and pigeons are picking up grains in the courtyard. A little girl in a pale straw-colored dress and a white apron is sitting on the steps and giving a lamb milk out of a cup. A man, carrying a basket of eggs and a green pot, is laughing and talking with her. 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.
Troost, the Dutch Watteau or Hogarth.—Cornelis Troost (1697-1750) was born at the close of the great period of Dutch art. The great painters were all dead. Dutch painting had lost its originality and native vigor. Under these circumstances Troost made himself the painter of his period and of his country. Impelled by a witty and caustic humor, he thought to bring back in the eighteenth century what Jan Steen had illustrated in the seventeenth. But, inferior in every way to that master, he saw contemporary society only on the stage or in books; and, instead of painting manners, customs, and absurdities of the middle classes by observing them in nature, he painted them as they were represented on the stage. Almost all his heroes were characters of the comedy or the novel. Troost has been called the Dutch Watteau and the Dutch Hogarth. His pictures may be classified as follows: Conversations, Comic subjects, Portraits, and Military subjects. The first follow the style of Watteau; the second, Hogarth; and the last are reminiscent of Frans Hals.
His Excellence in Drawing and Color.—Excellence of drawing and richness of color distinguish all his works, which are also valuable for their accurate portrayal of the manners and customs, costume and furniture of his day. Troost worked in oil, pastel, and gouache with equal facility; and produced many excellent mezzotints and etchings.
Blanc on Troost's Style.—"What we admire in him to-day is the talent of the painter properly so-called, the art of enlightening and grouping his figures and placing them on the stage, the brush-work, the selection and quality of the tones,—in other words, order, chiaroscuro, color, and touch. A man of wit, he shines in composition; although adroitly calculated, his own humor always appears spontaneous and natural. Troost never introduces useless personages nor superfluous ornaments into his pictures. He clearly sets forth what he wants to show; and, contrary to the habits of the other masters of his nation who take pleasure in the accumulation of accessories, he only puts into his interiors necessary furniture and significant utensils; and in his open-air Conversations the surroundings are not overloaded with detail, but simple and agreeable, being calculated to achieve the idea of the picture, so admirably are they connected with the action of the figures. Troost and Terburg, of all the Dutch masters of genre, are the ones who best understood the concentration of the interest of a picture, and what is called the repose of the composition."[18]
A Picture Illustrative of the Concentration of its Interest.—"On looking over his pictures in the little room devoted to his work in the Mauritshuis, we find more than one example of this intelligent sobriety. Take for instance L'Amour mal assorté. Here we have an old man declaring his love to a young widow. He has thrown on the floor his cane, hat, and gloves; and, in his senile ardor, he clasps the facilely chaste Susanna. What a pretty interior! A Slingelandt, a Gerard Dou, or a Mieris would have multiplied here the details of domestic comfort; here there is not a detail, not a single piece of furniture too much; but yet there is nothing lacking that should be there,—neither the clock, the canary in its cage, the portrait of the deceased husband whose place the guest desires to fill, nor the flower-vase with its full-blown rose, like the charmer whom the admirer wants to gather."
Pictures of Love and Intrigue.—"Again we have The Deceived Tutor, a scene anticipated from 'The Barber of Seville.' Here we see coming down the street a maiden led prisoner by her tutor, a jealous bear clothed all in black. While she occupies his attention with a sweet smile, her little hand receives the kiss of a lover whom chance has led that way. Other scenes of similar intrigue treated in this light vein are The Lover in Disguise and The Lover Artist. The scenes are taken from the comedies and vaudevilles of Langendijk, Lingelbach, Asselijn, Van der Hoeven, Van Paffenrode, and D. Buysero."
The Dispute of the Astronomers.—"A picture that does not deal with love and intrigue, but is full of a different kind of humor is The Dispute of the Astronomers, from a comedy by P. Langendijk, in which two astronomers in the heat of their discussion on the systems of Copernicus and Ptolemy make use of the plates and bottles on the supper table to illustrate the sun and the planets. Another interesting pastel is one depicting the old Dutch custom of a band of men and children singing hymns before the doors of the village on Twelfth Night, carrying a huge paper star, lighted within."
Hondecoeter, Painter of Living Birds.—The great Melchior d'Hondecoeter (1636-95) began his career with marines; but it was not long before he acquired celebrity as a painter of birds only, which he represented not exclusively like Fyt, after a day's shooting, or as stock in a poulterer's shop, but as living beings with passions of joy and fear and anger. Though without Fyt's brilliant tone and high finish, his birds are always full of action. William III. employed him to paint his menagerie at Loo, and this picture shows that he could overcome the difficulty of painting India's cattle, elephants, and gazelles. Hondecoeter's best pictures have remained in Holland, and The Hague and Amsterdam galleries possess his most interesting canvases. The four at the Mauritshuis are: Geese and Ducks, Hens and Ducks, The Menagerie of William III. at Loo, and The Jackdaw Stripped of his Borrowed Feathers. All these are worthy of study, although Hondecoeter's most celebrated picture, The Floating Feather, hangs in the Rijks.