Painted in oil on panel.

1 ft. 6¾ in. × 1 ft. 5 in. (0·47 × 0·43.)

GERARD TERBORCH

Gerard Terborch (1617–1681) was the creator of the “Conversation-piece,” and one of the earliest to portray the well born engaged in music lessons and similar occupations; he was one of the greatest of the Dutch “small-masters,” and in every way the superior of the uninspired Dou. Terborch invites us to join him in the fine decorum of a noble chamber where the appointments are carefully tended, while its occupants give themselves up to cultured, if not perhaps deeply intellectual, pursuits. We forget all about the carousing and bestial profligates who people the taverns of Jan Steen and much less accomplished painters, and watch the refined fingers stray over the keyboard of the open spinet or sweep the strings of a well-made mandoline, as in the Concert (No. 2589, [Plate XXXIII.]). Equally fine are the two Music Lessons (No. 2588 and No. 2591), the former being signed and dated 1660.

The Military Galant (No. 2587) exhibits Terborch’s dexterity in the rendering of reflected light on a red tablecloth, although the subject has an innuendo which hardly adds to its charm. The Ecclesiastical Assembly (No. 2590) is only a small sketch on panel, and affords but a feeble echo of this painter’s masterpiece, the Ratification of the Peace of Münster, in the National Gallery. Terborch was a pupil of his father, who had visited Italy, and he studied also under Pieter Molyn the Elder at Haarlem previous to visiting England in 1635. He travelled much more extensively than most of his contemporaries, and went to Spain during the best period of art in the Peninsula. He does not seem to have been dependent on his professional success for his living, which was passed in easy circumstances. Nor did he busy himself as a teacher, his only direct pupil being Caspar Netscher (1639–1684), who gives us a Music Lesson (No. 2486), of the approved stamp, and a Violoncello Lesson (No. 2487).

JAN STEEN

It is not known for certain whether Jan Steen (1626?–1679) was a pupil of Nicholaes Knupfer, a native of Leipzig who resided for a time at Leyden, but he certainly worked under Adriaen van Ostade at Haarlem, and later became a pupil of Jan van Goyen, whose daughter Margaretha he married as his first wife. Steen certainly leased a brewery in Delft for six years, and he is frequently mentioned in the archives of that town about 1656; he subsequently kept a tavern in the Langebrug in Leyden in 1672. His art is vivacious if not boisterous, and the strength and versatility he displayed in the nine hundred pictures with which he is justly credited give him a high place among the artists of Holland in the seventeenth century. The frequency with which he painted the Interior of a Tavern (No. 2578) has suggested that he carried on the tradition of the Flemish-Dutch roysterer Adriaen Brouwer; but such scenes, magnificently as they are handled, are apt to become boring in time. This large canvas is dated 1674, and the coat of arms of Charles v. is fastened on to the balcony in which are spectators. The Merry Company at Table (No. 2579) is somewhat sketchy in parts, but the lighting is well regulated, and the canvas is signed in full on the back of a blue-covered chair to the right. That the Bad Company (No. 2580, [Plate XXXIV.]) is admirably painted will be conceded by all, but refinement is not its distinguishing feature. A young man dressed in a red jacket is sleeping with his head on the lap of a girl, while another girl is relieving him of his watch. The scene is laid in a tavern, on the floor of which are painted with wonderful precision a number of tiny objects. It was not Steen’s habit to paint representations of cultured society such as Terborch delighted in.

PLATE XXXIV.—JAN STEEN
(1626?–1679)
DUTCH SCHOOL
No. 2580.—BAD COMPANY
(La Mauvaise compagnie)

The scene takes place in a tavern. A young man has fallen asleep with his head in the lap of a girl, who is seated to the right of the composition, and holds a glass of wine in her right hand. Another girl has just taken the young man’s watch from his pocket and is giving it to an old woman, who receives it with evident glee. On the left a man sits at a table smoking his pipe, and another is playing the fiddle.