The Family Concert
Jan Steen (Dutch, 1626–1679)
1666
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 86.6 × 101 cm (34 1/8 × 39 3/4 in.); Framed: 101.6 × 115.6 × 5.1 cm (40 × 45 1/2 × 2 in.)
- Culture
- Holland
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Gift of Timothy B. Blackstone
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This well-appointed interior sets the scene for the courtship ritual of music-making, through which men and women became acquainted by singing and playing instruments together. The boy in the foreground, mimicking the adults, strums a cello with a pipe and breaks a string, a subtle allusion to the perils of unbridled passion. Jan Steen, one of the Dutch Republic’s most prolific comic painters, crafted his scenes upon the contemporary notion that comedy mirrors everyday life.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
