Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 1, 1908.djvu/25

 SECTION I JAN STEEN JAN STEEN was born in Leyden about the year 1626. The date of his birth is uncertain. It is inferred from his own statement that he was twenty years of age when, in November 1646, he enrolled himself as a student at the University of Leyden. Two years later he was among the artists who founded the Leyden Guild of St. Luke. In 1648, then, he was no longer a student. According to Houbraken, Steen's master was Nicolaes Knupfer, a native of Leipzig, who was trained as an artist under the influence of the Utrecht painters ; Arie de Vois, who was about five years younger than Steen, is said to have also studied under Knupfer. It is known that Knupfer resided for a time in Leyden, and it is not impossible that Houbraken's story was based on fact. Probably Steen learned only the elements of his art from Knupfer ; his pictures show no trace of Knupfer's style of painting or composition. The same may be said of Jan van Goyen, who is alleged to have been Steen's second master, and became his father-in-law. The true predecessors of Jan Steen in Dutch painting must be sought rather in Jan Miense Molenaer, first of all, in his early pictures of peasants and children (1627-40), and then in masters like "Esaias van de Velde, Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot, and Pieter de Bloot, who introduced into their landscapes small and finely drawn figures of peasants such as are found in Steen's earliest pictures. Jan Steen, however, owed more to his own genius than to these precursors. The only man from whom he could have acquired the distinctive qualities of his art was Adriaen Brouwer, who died in 1638 ; but from a technical point of view Steen as a painter was more closely related to any of the four painters named above than he was to Brouwer. 1 In 1649 Steen went to The Hague and stayed there until the middle of 1654. Then he leased a brewery in Delft for six years, and is repeatedly mentioned in documents in the Delft archives for the years 1656 and 1657. He painted in 1655 the so-called portrait of "The 1 It has been asserted that Jan Steen, during his stay at Haarlem, owed much to the influence of Adriaen van Ostade. It may be asked, however, what an artist, who could paint in 1660 such masterpieces as the "The Poultry- Yard " at The Hague, the "Grace before Meat" in the Morrison Collection, and the " Artist eating Oysters " in Lord Lonsdale's collection, could learn from Ostade at that date. VOL. I I B