around 1626 -1679 · Leiden, Delft and Haarlem

Loud families, parties, doctors and proverbs make Jan Steen the great director of human comedy in 17th-century Dutch painting.

Jan Havicksz Steen was born in Leiden around 1626 into a family of brewers. After Latin school, he chose painting and assimilated several traditions: the genre scene of Utrecht, the popular observation of Haarlem and the tonal landscape of Jan van Goyen, whose daughter Margriet he married in 1649. Steen was among the founders of the guild of Saint-Luc de Leiden in 1648. His career took him to The Hague, Delft, Warmond and Haarlem before a definitive return to Leiden. He also operated a brewery in Delft then an inn, activities often wrongly associated with the idea of a disorderly painter. On the contrary, his abundant work shows an exceptional narrative organization. The Festival of Saint Nicholas distributes joy, disappointment, gluttony and family authority in an interior where each gesture tells a story. As the elders sing, so play the young illustrates a proverb about the example given by adults: music, drink and childish imitation combine amusement and moral warning. The Happy Family takes this logic to its peak. Laughter and singing seduce, but the scattered objects, children and looks remind us that immeasurable pleasure produces its own disorder. In The Doctor's Visit, the diagnosis of a supposedly ill young woman becomes a comedy about romantic desire. Steen, however, does not limit herself to turbulent households. He paints biblical stories, mythology, portraits, landscapes, schools, theaters and inns. He sometimes slips into his scenes himself in the guise of a musician or a happy drinker. Died in Leiden in 1679, he left an art where compositional virtuosity serves a tender, ironic and lucid knowledge of human behavior. The "Jan Steen" selection notably compares The Feast of Saint Nicholas and As the Elders Sing, so the Young People play. His reading favors the story.

Steen organizes disorder with playwright precision: laughter first attracts, then every detail reveals a consequence, a lesson or a mirror of our own habits.