Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 1, 1908.djvu/28

 JAN STEEN SECT. PUPILS AND IMITATORS OF JAN STEEN Jan Steen is not known to have had any pupils in the ordinary sense of the word. His two sons, Cornelis and Thaddeus Steen, were painters, but none of their works has been preserved. His principal imitator was RICHARD BRAKENBURG (1650-1702). This artist, according to Houbraken, was a pupil of A. van Ostade and H. Mommers. But he imitated Jan Steen more closely than those painters, both in his style of painting, his types of character, and in the arrangement of his pictures of weddings, merrymakings, quack-doctors, and the like. He had little or no invention. His figures are repeated over and over again. The costumes show that his pictures belong to a later period than Steen's. Hendrik de Valk was, in turn, a pupil of Brakenburg, and possessed still less talent or invention. Among the other artists whose works have often been ascribed to Jan Steen, though some of them must be classed rather with his forerunners than with his successors, may be mentioned JAN MIENSE MOLENAER (about 1600-1668), a pupil of Frans Hals. GERRIT LUNDENS, an artist whose work has a strong resemblance to that of Molenaer. J(?) DE MAN, an artist of whose life nothing is known.. In the catalogues of the museums at The Hague and at Rotterdam he is wrongly identified with the Delft painter Cornelis de Man, though the signature on his picture at The Hague is different. W. KOOL, whose pictures of fairs have been continually taken for works by Jan Steen. P. ROESTRATEN, the son-in-law of Frans Hals, from whose hand there exist, besides still-life pieces, several scenes in the manner of Jan Steen ; one of these is in the Haarlem Museum. EGBERT HEEMSKERK, called "The Peasant Heemskerk," a very indifferent artist with little originality. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE In the references added to the entries in the Catalogue " Sm." = Smith, "Catalogue Raisonne," vol. iv. (1833). "Sm. Suppl." = Smith, "Catalogue Raisonne," Supplement (1842). "W." = Westrheene, "Jan Steen : fitudes sur 1'Art en Hollande." (The Hague, 1856.)