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Children of the Golden Age

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Children of the Golden Age CHILDREN OF THE GOLDEN AGE JAN STEEN AND THE PORTRAYAL! OF YOUTH SEBASTIAN ARYANA UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM ! CHILDREN OF THE GOLDEN AGE JAN STEEN AND THE PORTRAYAL OF YOUTH ! SEBASTIAN ARYANA UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE . i 1. INTRODUCTION . 1 2. HISTORICITY . 7 3. ARTISTIC DIALOGUE . .15 4. CHILDREN IN ART . .19 5. COMIC TRADITION . 25 6. LIFE AND TRAINING OF JAN STEEN . 35 7. THE PUZZLE OF MOLENAER . 40 8. DIFFERENCES IN CHILDREN . 45 9. DISTORTED REALITIES . 51 10. CONCLUSION . 56 CATALOGUE . 66 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 86 PREFACE Every research begins with a spark of imagination. For me, it was Johannes Vermeer’s Little Street in Delft. It was the sheer quietness of the picture, the stillness of the moment, the randomness of the scene, and the simplicity of the whole thing. Yet, there is enough in the picture to have fed scholarly research for decades, to fill pages of books, and to gather huge crowds in front of it at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. During the last year of my undergraduate studies at the University of Washington, the seemingly realism of the seventeen-century Dutch paintings made me curious. But I had to look for my own niche in the field of Dutch Art History, which ranges from portraiture to comics to landscape and seascape. The likes of Vermeer and Rembrandt are over-studied, and the vastness of literature available on them, makes the challenge less appealing. It was in 2010 when I began to look at the “comical” pictures of seventeenth-century Dutch art to find a topic to write my undergraduate research paper on. That paper I submitted to my influential professor Dr. Jolynn Edwards, under the title of The Theater of Sins and Laughter. Two years later, after having taken more Art History classes as an un-matriculated student at the University of Washington in Seattle, I summited a revised version under the new title of Mysteries of Fools to the University of Amsterdam as part of my application for the Masters of Arts degree in Dutch seventeenth-century art history. During my stay in Amsterdam, I centered my focus on Jan Steen, the prominent name in Dutch comics, and further on refined my research question to the children in his paintings. This thesis is a study of the portrayal of children by Steen, and their possible connection to the children in the works of Jan Miense Molenaer. Chapter one introduces the character of Jan Steen and his fondness of humorous pictures. It then briefly points out that the children in Steen’s paintings are different from the ! i! tradition, in that they are portrayed as actual young individuals with childlike features, rather than small sized people with adult demeanors. Working in a number of different Dutch towns helped shape Steen’s painting manner, with Haarlem in particular having had the greatest influence on him. Of the Haarlem painters, Molenaer and his probable influence in the way Steen depicted children is singled out as the topic for this thesis. Chapter two discusses the historicity of the subject from the biased earliest biographers of the eighteenth century down to the modern approach of the twentieth-century art historians, and distinguishes the shortcomings of each wave of scholars throughout the centuries. The lack of scholarly interest on the particularity of children in the works of Steen, and their connection to the rather vaguely studied Molenaer, gives green lights to this research to begin. In chapter three, the artistic dialogue that existed between the artists is discussed, indicating that using existing themes and relying on established canon, was not considered copying, and that it was a part of the process to become a professional painter. Thus, any similarities that may be found in the works of Steen and those of other masters, is not ground enough to dispute his originality and uniqueness of style. Chapter four summarizes the evolution of child portraiture in the western art from the renaissance down to the seventeenth century, when children became more expressive and were painted with a more psychological approach. Steen often used mischievous children as commentators on the misbehaved adults, thus to convey didactic messages, though children in Steen’s work are sometimes ordinary children, who are parts of a narrative genre. In order to better understand the comic form within the categories of genre, chapter five discussed in detail the history and meaning of comic painting in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. This was a broad category of humorous and delightful pictures, which in accordance to contemporary norms, functioned both as entertainment and moral instructions. ! ii! Steen’s life and training are looked upon closer in chapter six. By bringing back the popular themes of previous generations and elaborating on their ideas, Steen invented new variations with heartwarming changes, which appealed to his audience. Hence the repetition of certain subjects, was the result of them being sold. The sheer diversity of his subjects raises the question of who and where influenced him the most. The development of Steen’s work seems to have been perfected in Haarlem, where he must have met Molenaer. In chapter seven, Molenaer’s shrouded-in-mystery life sets the stage for studying his influence on Steen. In a town ripe with comic tradition, Molenaer emerges as the link between Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Steen. They both painted children who evoked laughter; yet, research reveals differences between Molenaer’s rather simple compositions and Steen’s storytelling discussion-pieces. Those differences are explored in chapters eight and nine, arguing that Molenaer’s children are stage actors, who bring the audience into their theatrical space, rather than bringing the story of the painting out to the viewer, like Steen’s children do. Furthermore, the nature of realism in the works of Steen and Molenaer, and how they reflected it onto the children, varies. While Molenaer’s comic realism was a random moment in time pointed out by the gestural language of children, Steen painted the disorder and the imperfections of reality, narrated by children. The thesis concludes in chapter ten, deciding that even though Steen might have received the idea of including children in his pictures from Molenaer, he drew his own unique types of children, who had new ways of telling the stories. Sebastian Aryana Seattle, Washington August 2015 ! iii! 1. INTRODUCTION “If one wishes to derive honor from this, the noblest aspect of art, then one must transform oneself completely into an actor.” –Samauel van Hoogstraeten Jan Steen’s face is one of the best recognizable in all of seventeenth-century Dutch art, second only to Rembrandt, who painted some fifty self-portraits. About three hundred and fifty paintings by Steen have survived, hundreds more are known to have existed from documents. But he only needed one self-portrait (Fig. 1) to place his image in the Rijksmuseum’s Hall of Honor. Despite being a formal portrait, it gives the impression as though the sitter is about to burst into laughter at any moment. Steen’s power lied in his sense of humor and cheerfulness. He could turn everything into a witty subject, in such a way, that the Dutch proverb Jan Steen household, has survived to this day. The messages in his paintings are often very clear, though at times he could be ambiguous, leaving us in doubt whether it is a joke or a serious incident. Steen knew what sells. He picked the society’s issues of interest, and turned them into unique and visually striking images of life, which have captured the imagination of his audience for more than three centuries. The world he created is comical and fun, and at times Steen casts himself in it. His lightheartedness and questionable moral issues keep him just barely on the safe side, for even in biblical subjects he saw entertainment and amusement. He frequently chose moments of mockery and mankind’s foolishness. With the addition of children as disobedient and naughty, to underscore the topsy-turvy nature of the world of adults, Steen invented a unique class of genre, which defied the contemporary social norms.1 Steen was not the first Netherlandish artist to include children in paintings. Pieter Bruegel painted children at play too, but they were represented as dwarfs rather than !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1!Mariët Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen: Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 1997), 154-5.! ! 1! children. He never conceived the real nature of childhood. Frans Hals did it better by capturing the laughter of children, but they are mainly portraitures. Steen, on the other hand, was not a portrait painter, not in the psychological sense of individualism anyway. Steen’s children, some of whom are modeled after his own, are real children, not small people. Steen’s child-like children, in particular in the scenes of teasing cats, were perhaps influenced by the children in the works of Jan Miense Molenaer, Frans and Drick Hals, and Judith Leyster. But Steen’s pictures are scenes of larger groups and more complex.2 Some of the figures in Steen’s pictures are presented as universal human types with comical features. They do not seem to bear likeness to real individuals. Even the facial features of his own character are often altered from one picture to another. However, the children in his paintings seem to be recognizable. Sometimes they even bear resemblance to the adults in the pictures. In particular, Steen’s own children can be identified fairly easily, and it is fascinating to watch them growing up in the paintings. Nonetheless, with the exception of his own family members, who were readily available as models, Steen had a tendency to typify, instead of studying individual characteristics.
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