Jan Havicksz. Steen

T. Regters, Amsterdam, by 1768;
His sale, Amsterdam, Jean Yver, April 18, 1768, lot 9;
J. Witsen, Amsterdam, by 1790;
His sale, Jean Yver, August 16, 1790, lot 61, for 62 florins, to Spaan;
J. Bleuland, Utrecht, by 1839;
His sale, Utrecht, Lamme, May 6, 1839, lot 308;
D. Vis Blokhuyzen, Rotterdam, by 1870;
His sale, Paris, April 1, 1870, lot 69, for 425 francs;
Marquis d'Aoust, Paris;
M. Kann, Paris, by 1911;
With Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris, by 1911;
Dr. M. Wasserman, Paris, by 1911;
His anonymous sale, Paris, Hotel Drouot, June 12, 1919, lot 33;
Anonymous sale, December 11, 1928, to J. Hogeraats, The Hague;
Dr. Molhuysen, The Hague;
Jacob Hartog, The Hague;
His forced sale to Hitler for the Linz Museum, 18 August 1942, for 40,000 hfl.;
Restituted to the Dutch government 15 February 1946;
Returned to Jacob Hartog, New York, 1946;
Thence by descent in the family.

Paris, Salle du Jeu de Paume, Exposition des Grands et Petits Maîtres hollandais du XVII siècle, 1911, no. 153.

T. van Westrheene, Jan Steen. Étude sur l'art en Hollande, The Hague 1856, cat. no. 37;
A. Dayot, Exposition des Grands et Petits Maîtres hollandais du XVII siècle, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1911, p. 151, cat. no. 153, reproduced, p. 98;
C. Hofstede de Groot, Catalogue of the Dutch Painters, London 1913, vol. I, pp. 185 and 229, cat. nos. 702 and 847;
K. Braun, Meesters der Schilderkunst: Jan Steen, Rotterdam 1980, p. 103. cat. no. 128;
B. Schwarz, Hitlers Museum.  Die Fotoalben Gemäldegalerie Linz:  Dokumentze zum "Führermuseum", Vienna 2004, p. 147, no. XXII/23, reproduced p. 360.

Jan Steen's Procuress is a variation on the brothel theme popularized in the Netherlands earlier in the seventeenth century by artists such as Dirck van Baburen (see Museum of Fine Arts, Boston inv. no. 50.2721) and Gerrit Honthorst.  These artists had in turn drawn upon the pictorial and literary tradition of the "ill-matched couple" popular in the Netherlands since the sixteenth century.  But while traditional depictions of the ill-matched couple were construed as moral warnings against foolishness and deception, the images of brothels produced by Baburen, Steen and their contemporaries were often more ambiguous.

In the present painting, a man stands at an open window in the right background looking out, while in the foreground, a smiling, seated man hands a coin to a standing woman, while another young woman looks on from the bed to the left.  The presence of the man in the background heightens our own voyeuristic point of view.  While he quite literally "turns his back" on the activities taking place within, Steen places that action front and center for the viewer, with the exchange of coins as the focal point of the composition.  Although Steen has also alerted his contemporaries to the illicit nature of this scene through his inclusion of the fiddle, a symbol of lechery, and the clay pipe, a euphamism for visiting a brothel¹, the overall focus seems to be on the commercial, rather the sexual, transaction taking place. 

If The Procuress is about the financial side of the brothel, then Couple in a Bedroom (Bredius Museum, The Hague) reveals what you get for the money.  Depicting a couple clambering into bed together, Couple in a Bedroom explicitly addresses the sexual aspect of the monetary exchange depicted in The Procuress.  Yet here again, Steen's depiction seems almost joyous and free from moralizing undertones.  This ambiguity has helped to keep Steen's genre images, in which virtue and vice seem fluid and interchangable, fresh and appealing to modern viewers. 


1.  A. Wheelock et. al., Jan Steen:  Painter and Storyteller, New Haven and London 1996, exh. cat., p.219.