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Lot Essay
Steen painted tavern interiors throughout his career, using them as settings for various scenes of indulgence, dissipation and seduction. Given that Steen's second career was as a brewer and an innkeeper (one who, according to his biographer Arnold Houbraken, was 'his own best customer'), Steen was on very familiar territory in the tavern. As Chapman remarked: 'the tavern is Steen's quintessential realm of transgression and temptation' (cited in Jan Steen Painter and Storyteller, A.K. Wheelock, ed., exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London, 1996, p. 19). This picture of a couple making merry in an inn is exemplary of the raucous figure types so familiar in the master’s work.
Holding a large roemer aloft, the male protagonist turns towards a young woman carrying a jug and a pipe. She is dressed in an expensive silk, fur-lined coat, which is open to reveal the lacing of her bodice beneath, conveying both a sense of disarray and loose morals. The coal burner with the pipe resting against it in the centre foreground may refer to the saying ‘de pijp uitkloppen’ (to knock out the pipe), a widespread sexual euphemism. The musician in the background would have further added to the sense of debauchery, since musicians in taverns in Holland during the seventeenth century typically played tunes accompanied by lewd or bawdy lyrics, in contrast to the genteel music of wealthy households depicted by painters like Jan Vermeer or Gerard ter Borch.
It is possible that Steen cast himself as the central male figure in this scene, as he did in a number of other works. Comparison with known depictions of the artist, for instance in his As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young (c. 1663-5; The Hague, Mauritshuis) and his 'The Broken Eggs' Interior of an Inn (c. 1664-8; London, National Gallery), shows some consistency in the physiognomy with this male sitter. In some instances, these self-portraits were included to engage directly with the viewer, playing a rhetorical role as a commentator or intermediary between the event depicted and Steen’s audience. Rather than acting as a link with the viewer here, however, the jovial man, dressed in bright red with a loose-fitting grey coat – the slashes at the knees suggestive not of contemporary dress, but rather of theatrical costume – plays the role of the picture’s leading character.
Holding a large roemer aloft, the male protagonist turns towards a young woman carrying a jug and a pipe. She is dressed in an expensive silk, fur-lined coat, which is open to reveal the lacing of her bodice beneath, conveying both a sense of disarray and loose morals. The coal burner with the pipe resting against it in the centre foreground may refer to the saying ‘de pijp uitkloppen’ (to knock out the pipe), a widespread sexual euphemism. The musician in the background would have further added to the sense of debauchery, since musicians in taverns in Holland during the seventeenth century typically played tunes accompanied by lewd or bawdy lyrics, in contrast to the genteel music of wealthy households depicted by painters like Jan Vermeer or Gerard ter Borch.
It is possible that Steen cast himself as the central male figure in this scene, as he did in a number of other works. Comparison with known depictions of the artist, for instance in his As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young (c. 1663-5; The Hague, Mauritshuis) and his 'The Broken Eggs' Interior of an Inn (c. 1664-8; London, National Gallery), shows some consistency in the physiognomy with this male sitter. In some instances, these self-portraits were included to engage directly with the viewer, playing a rhetorical role as a commentator or intermediary between the event depicted and Steen’s audience. Rather than acting as a link with the viewer here, however, the jovial man, dressed in bright red with a loose-fitting grey coat – the slashes at the knees suggestive not of contemporary dress, but rather of theatrical costume – plays the role of the picture’s leading character.