Jan Steen, a painter and storyteller

By Myra Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): When Jan Steen (1626-1679) married Margriet van Goyen in 1649, his father gave him a brewery in Delft, so he could support his new family. However, neither his wife nor Jan Steen himself understood the principles of keeping the accounts of a household as well as the brewery and they soon ran into trouble with the tax collector.

Jan Steen decided to create a painting, and this first painting seemed to have been a reflection of his own disorderly household. He depicted a room in disarray, a cat running off with the bacon, a dog slobbering from a pot, children rolling about wildly and, on the mantelpiece, was a monkey gazing at all of this with a long face.

It is not clear why he did not start earning a living by painting earlier, for he had studied painting and by the time he married he was an apprentice to his father-in-law Jan van Goyen, a famous landscape painter.

His preference for the disorderly, that he depicted in his early paintings, has earned him a place in another aspect of Dutch history: the Dutch saying "A household of Jan Steen" is applied to households that are more or less similar to his paintings.

However, it does not mean that he monotonously painted the same theme. On the contrary, he had, like Rembrandt van Rijn, another famous Dutch painter, distinguished himself by his artistic breadth and versatility and painted a broad range of subjects, including biblical personalities and scenes. His upbringing in the Catholic faith is certainly reflected in the different angels he envisioned in these scenes.

In 1660 he moved to Haarlem, where he devoted himself to painting and enjoyed the height of his career. All in all, he painted 400 paintings. These paintings were sold to prominent families in Leyden and Amsterdam, and some of his early paintings were even found in the collection of the Swedish governor-general of Pomerania.

Many paintings however, were owned by brewers with whom he traded his paintings for a few bottles of drink, for his weakness was that he liked to drink a few glasses too many.

The mood and subject matter in Steen's paintings ranges enormously, from intimate moments when a family says grace before a meal to festive celebrations of Twelfth Night. But in all of his paintings we respond in a warm and compassionate way to the ordinary figures he presents.

Steen liked to portray himself in his paintings, usually as a grinning figure, enjoying himself with a glass in his hand while celebrations are going on. Despite the apparent frivolity of the scene he painted, the painting often had a rather sobering message.

Steen was a moralist who often used emblematic references in his paintings to warn the viewer about the transitoriness of life. Cut flowers or broken eggshells on the floor, a young boy blowing bubbles in the paintings may have symbolic meanings attached to them. Earthly pleasures are short-lived and, as Steen seems to suggest, we should contemplate on more lasting values, and for that he may add a church tower in the background.

In a painting entitled The feast of Saint Nicholas, all the children are having fun because they get presents. Interestingly, Jan Steen painted himself as a boy who gets no presents but a brush to clean the chimney. This shows his sense of humor, especially relating to himself. His self-presentation as a boy may mean that on that occasion he felt the child in him coming up.

The exhibition at Erasmus Huis, Jakarta, is only a documentary exhibition, which means that no paintings are exhibited. But the viewer can enjoy a sample of his paintings with explanations printed in English and German. A video showing his works, and explanation of his subjects and techniques help us to enjoy and appreciate the creativity of this great painter.

To be able to enjoy the originals, one must travel to the Netherlands, where his paintings can be found in four major museums. A number of major art galleries in other countries in Europe and also in the U.S. boast a collection of his oeuvre.