Wallace Collection Online - Merrymaking in a Tavern

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Jan Steen (1626 - 1679) Merrymaking in a Tavern Netherlands: Date: probably 1674

Object Type: Painting

Medium: Oil on canvas

Image size: 73.3 x 65.9 cm

Inv: P158

Location: East Galleries II

The son of a brewer, in 1647 Jan Steen began his professional training as a painter. He is thought to have studied with Jan van Goyen and Adriaen van Ostade, whose low-life genre pictures greatly influenced his early works. Steen’s Merrymaking in a Tavern combines the Flemish tradition of low-life tavern scenes with the more elegant Dutch merry companies. The lively description of the domestic muddle of mothers, children, dancers, musicians and onlookers creates a boisterous scene. The lack of a central motif reinforces the work’s naturalistic appearance, yet the composition is carefully constructed around a group of selected incidents. A key hangs on the back wall of the tavern, suspended between a dancing girl and an older quarrelsome couple, as a warning of where such mayhem might lead. The variety of human life is depicted, with an old woman praying next to a young boy at a table, an amorous seated couple, a bagpipe player, a group of men drinking on the right and a mother, baby and crouching boy in the foreground. Each of these characters illustrates human conduct at different ages.

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