Jan Havicksz. Steen* (1626-1679)

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

細節

Jan Havicksz. Steen* (1626-1679)

A Village Wedding

signed 'JSteen' [JS linked]
27 1/8 x 33 7/8in. (69 x 86cm.)

來源

Anon. Sale, The Hague, 1744 (50 florins).
Baron Lockhorst, Rotterdam.
Charles Galli, Edinburgh, by whom purchased with the whole of Baron Lockhorst's collection in 1824.
N. Leyland, Hoggiston Castle, Beal, Northumberland, by descent to
Captain C.D. Leyland, Camp Hill, Bedale, Yorkshire.
with Eugene Slatter, London (Paintings of Life and Still-Life by Dutch & Flemish Masters of the Seventeenth Century, May 22-July 6, 1946, no. 9, illustrated), from whom purchased in 1946 by
Sir Francis Glyn, Hob Farm, Albury, Hertfordshire, and by descent to
Jeremy Glyn; Sotheby's, London, July 5, 1967, lot 106, (£24,000 to D.H. Cevat).
William J. Middendorf II, Greenwich, Connecticut, until 1969.

出版

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., IV, 1833, p. 47, no. 142.
T. van Westrheene, Jan Steen; Etude sur l'art en Hollande, 1856, p. 147, nos. 223 and 227.
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., I, 1908, p. 129, no. 483.
J. Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen, 1980, p. 90, under no. 41 (where the early provenance of the present picture is incorrectly applied to that in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection).
I. Gaskell, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Painting, 1989, p. 220, note 3, fig. 1.

展覽

London, Royal Academy, Dutch Pictures 1450-1750, Nov. 22, 1952- March 1, 1953, no. 548.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 1968-July 1969.
Münster.

拍品專文

This painting is one of several early works by Jan Steen dealing with the comic theme of the bridal procession to the groom's home or an inn. A painting dated 1653 in the Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst (on loan to the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Inv. no. 2314; Hofstede de Groot op. cit., no. 455; Braun op. cit, no. 56) employs a very similar design in reverse with the groom again descendng from the porticoed entryway to bow to the shy bride and her entourage in a courtyard. In undated paintings in the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (Inv. no. P1971.1; Hofstede de Groot op. cit., no. 482; Braun, op. cit., no. A-294) and formerly in the Goodriaan Collection, Rotterdam (Hofstede de Groot op. cit., no. 471, Braun op. cit., no. 39) the groom kisses the bride. Still other variants of the theme on upright formats were formerly owned by Lionel de Rothschild (Hofstede de Groot op. cit., no. 461; Braun op. cit., no. 187, improbably dated to circa 1663) and presently in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, (acc. no. 1934.24; ibid., no. 41, with the provenance confused with that of the present painting). As Gaskell observed of the last mentioned (op. cit., pp. 218-21, no. 47, as only 'Attributed to Jan Steen'), the Thyssen painting repeats or paraphrases details in the present work, including the dogs in the foreground, the violinist and doodlesack player, and the rhetoricians who no doubt are reading an epithalamium from the balcony overhead. Yet another painting of the present theme has been regarded as a later work by the artist and sometimes called Het Spaanse Bruidje ('the Spanish Bride'; Braun op. cit. no. 326, circa 1668-72). It again depicts the meeting of the bride and groom but their more formally theatrical gestures, hispanicized costumes, and the vaguely italianate flavor of the architecture suggested to S.J. Gudlaugsson (De Komedianten bij Jan Steen en zijn tijdgenooten, 1945, p. 36) that the satire might have been inspired by plays like G.A. Bredero's De Spaansche Brabander. Throughout Steen's comic oeuvre, the themes of love and marriage loom large, from ardent but risible courtship, to the signing of marriage banns, even into the nupital chamber. Here, as in the Thyssen Collection's picture discussed by Gaskell, the satire is made broadly explicit by such crude details as the dogs, but the mockery is gently ameliorated by the bride's reticence and the eager groom's awkwardly decorous gestures.