Jan Havicksz. Steen Leiden 1626 - 1679

Gustaf Adolf sparre (1746-1794);
Sparre inv., 1794, no. 11.

Stockholm, 1884, no. 177;
Stockholm, 1967, no. 151 (p. 102 in the catalogue);
Kristianstad, 1977, no. 34. 

Granberg, 1885-6, no. 51;
Göthe, 1895, p. 35, no. 58;
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. I, London 1907, p. 216, no. 798;
Granberg, 1911-12, no. 423;
Kjellberg, 1966, p. 346;
Hasselgren, 1974, pp. 113, 120, reproduced p. 188;
K. Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen, Glarus/Rotterdam 1980, p. 100, no. 112, reproduced p. 101 (as whereabouts unknown; formerly in the Wachtmeister collection).

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a fine, perfectly flat oak panel. There is no trace of past movement but it has a, presumably precautionary, backing structure supporting the edges and with two cross bars, probably from early in the last century. The panel is rectangular behind the curved upper corners of the frame. Although there has been some recent varnishing and a few recent retouchings around the borders with the frame, the painting has been rather little touched in the past. There are a few minor old retouchings on the mature underlying varnish: two little touches above the door on the left, one brief line in the upper centre of the background wall retouched over a pentiment where an initial cross beam was painted out by the artist, some touches around the man's hair, one little retouching below the beautifully crisp signature in the lower left corner, and a few scattered along the base edge. One or two other small darkened older retouchings run in a vertical line upwards from the hem of the skirt, with a few other small touches to the right in the skirt, one in the sleeve and one little touch above the girl's head. There is also occasional older retouching at the edges for instance in the table cloth on the left, and along the extreme base edge. The fur border of the jacket was extended down in another pentiment, and the man's white kerchief and cuff overlaid previous layers apparently as an afterthought. This beautifully preserved painting has apparently always been sound structurally, and the rich unworn paint surface has escaped restoration for the greater part of the last century. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Braun dates this picture circa 1659-1661, that is to say to just before or just after Jan Steen's move from Warmond, near Leiden, to Haarlem.  Around this date Steen painted a number of interiors such as this one with two principal figures, as his contemporaries such as Frans van Mieris and Gerard Ter Borch were doing at the same time.

The influence of the Leiden fijnschilders on Steen's  work becomes more marked from 1658 onwards, following his move from Deflt to Leiden.  During this period Steen started to treat the same subjects as the fijnschilders, such as The Doctor's Visit, and he will have been aware of Frans van Mieris' comic treatments of erotic themes in inns or more plausibly brothels, such as his celebrated picture of 1658 in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, in which copulating dogs and bedding hanging over a baluster tell the viewer where the social encounter in the foreground is leading.¹  The Sparre picture is on a panel of  very similar size.  In it, Steen shows us a lecherous man proferring a clay pipe in a suggestive gesture to a young woman who is clearly the worse for drink, as her empty wineglass indicates.  A bed in the background tells us where this encounter too going to end up.

Apart from their very different handling of paint, the key difference between such pictures by Steen and those of Van Mieris, Ter Borch et al, is not in the comedy of the situation, but in Steen's caricatural figures.  Here, as in nearly all his work, Steen is more theatrical than any of his leading contemporaries, and he gives us the impression that his figures are acting comic parts for our entertainmant, and are not unaware participants, observed by the artist as if caught on camera. 

There can be no doubt that Sparre must have seen pictures like this in collections in The Hague and Rotterdam during his first visit to The Netherlands in 1768.  It is likely however that Sparre bought it later, in Paris in 1780, since it has the same design of frame as other pictures he bought at that time.

1.  Oil on panel, 42.8 by 33.3 cm.; see O. Naumann, Frans van Mieris the Elder, Doornspijk 1981, vol. 2, pp. 26-7, reproduced plate 23.