ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9605310005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: CARL HARTMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jan Steen found subjects for his paintings in both the Bible and in taverns, and if he sometimes confused the two, that didn't seem to bother people in the pious, hard-drinking Netherlands of 350 years ago.
The National Gallery of Art is exhibiting 48 paintings - his first big American show. It follows one devoted to his more famous contemporary, Johannes Vermeer.
Vermeer, known for his calm and reflective painting, was seven years older than Steen and working up to be head of the painters' guild in his native Delft in the 1650s. Steen was running an unsuccessful brewery where he was known as his own best customer.
Steen had a reputation as a devotee of wine, women, song and long clay tobacco pipes - which were symbols of dissipation in the Holland of his day. His reputation is backed by some of his work on exhibit at the National Gallery: ``Couple in a Bedroom,'' ``A Woman at Her Toilet'' and ``Wine Is a Mocker.''
His religious pictures are vivid and sensitive. Steen delighted in Delilah reaching for the scissors to cut Samson's strength-giving hair, and in faithless Bathsheba showing off a letter from King David. Bathsheba wears the long gown of a prosperous 17th-century lady - a red gown symbolizing passion. The king's letter begins provocatively ``Most beautiful Bathsheba - Because
In at least six paintings, Steen depicted Christ's first miracle, turning water into wine for the wedding feast at Cana. In the picture at the National Gallery - curator Arthur A. Wheelock Jr. called it his favorite - Jesus wears a somber brownish robe. Quietly blessing the water pots, he hardly stands out from the other guests. Steen portrays himself in the background with his glass raised, holding hands with a woman in a red dress.
As almost always with Steen, the picture is full of little side stories. An old lady with a doggie bag tries to drag her husband away before he gets another drink. A young woman in a beautifully painted satin gown is tasting the wine under the inquiring gaze of two men. One of them seems to be her husband, a rabbi.
Another guest, apparently unaware that the supply of wine had been renewed, is on his way out when a maidservant stops him and another guest turns to drag at his coat.
The Dutch drank wine when they were out for a good time. Beer was an everyday drink that seems to have been on the decline in Steen's day. His brewery was one of about 25 - down from 82 half a century earlier - in a town of some 25,000 people.
Steen's first biographer, Arnold Houbraken, says Steen's wife complained that things were dull at the brewery. So Steen put some live ducks into the alcoholic mash. His wife came to see what all the quacking and flapping was about.
``It's lively enough now, isn't it?'' Steen asked.
Dutch humor of the 17th century may not travel well, but Steen's wife, Margaret, the daughter of his teacher, Jan van Goyen, found that one uproarious.
Houbraken says that during small talk at a tavern, Steen told van Goyen that Margaret was pregnant. Van Goyen asked if he was sure.
``That I am,'' Houbraken quotes Steen as saying, ``as well I should be, for it was I who brought it about and I wish to marry her.''
Houbraken's account of how Steen wooed his second wife does not bear repeating in family newspapers.
The Dutch especially know Steen as a painter of children, usually in bunches - history records at least seven of his own. A messy family with three or four unruly kids is still known in Holland as ``a Jan Steen household.''
One of his best-loved paintings portrays the aftermath of a visit from St. Nicholas. Mama is beckoning to her 3-year-old, who seems to be afraid she will be deprived of her doll or a pailful of other gifts. A slightly older boy, rejoicing over his new golf club, makes fun of his big brother, who is weeping because the saint has only left him a switch, as a reward for bad behavior.
A still older girl looks on sympathetically as Grandma holds aside the curtain of a four-poster bed, where Santa seems to have hidden a better gift. Grandpa just sits there, impassive.
Unaccountably missing in this picture is the brown and white mongrel dog that appears in a dozen or more of the 48 paintings.
``Maybe it was the Steen family dog - sometimes you have to make up your own stories,'' Wheelock said.
Many Dutch children and parents will be disappointed if ``The Feast of St. Nicholas'' has not gone up again in Amsterdam by St. Nicholas Day, Dec. 5. The Shell Oil Company, which is supporting the show, will be responsible for that.
``Jan Steen - Painter and Storyteller'' will be on view at the National Gallery until Aug. 18, and at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Sept. 21 to Jan. 12, 1997.
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