Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding aJug and Singing
Jan Steen(Leiden 1626 – 1679 Leiden)

ca. 1660
oil on oval panel
22 x 17.3 cm
JS-100© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
Page 2 of 5

How to cite
Kloek, Wouter. “Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing” (2017). In The Leiden Collection
Catalogue,2nded.

EditedbyArthurK.

WheelockJr.

Newhttps://theleidencollection.com/artwork/old-woman-with-a-fur-cap-holding-a-jug-and-singing/York,

2017–20.

(archivedMay

2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative
occurs.

Situated against a dark background the seated old woman in Jan Steen’s

Comparative Figures

painting joyously sings as she holds a sheet of music in her left hand, thepromise of liquid pleasures in her earthenware jug adding to her festive
mood. She wears a white cap surmounted by a fur-trimmed head covering,
and a beautifully executed, pleated white lace collar. Otherwise, Steen has
rendered the woman’s simple clothing in broad areas of red, brown andblue.
In executing this work, Steen paid exceptional care to the rendering of thewoman’s fur head-covering, an article of clothing that also appears inpaintings

byGerritDou(1613–75),

forexampleinDou’s

Rembrandtesque Scholar Reading in the State Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg.[1] The attention Steen paid to articulating this head covering andcollar also owes much to Dou, as in that master’s depictions of Rembrandt’s
mother from the early 1630s,[2] and his Old Woman Reading a Book, ca.

Fig 1. Gerrit Dou, Old Woman
Reading a Book, oil on panel, 26 x
20 cm, The State Hermitage
Museum, Saint Petersburg, ??-885
Album / Art Resource, NY1660, which is also in St. Petersburg (fig 1).[3] Even the upright oval shape ofthe panel may owe its inspiration to Dou. Steen rarely painted on panels withthis shape, but Dou often did. These similarities in costume, technique andpanel shape, however, make all the more evident the differences in thebehavior of Steen’s slightly tipsy and earthy old crone and the more pious
women seen in Dou’s paintings. It is almost as though Steen intended topoke fun at that artist’s virtuous old women.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
Page 3 of 5

Steen’s oeuvre contains few points of reference for dating this work.
Nevertheless, an approximate date for the Leiden Collection painting ofaround 1660 seems likely because of the careful rendering of the oldwoman’s figure and her clothes, consistent with Steen’s manner of painting
at that time. One somewhat comparable work is Drinker at Smith College, c.
1660, which is also executed in a detailed manner, and where the drinker issimilarly posed (fig 2).[4] The way the old woman squints while reading thewords of her song recalls figures in other of Steen’s small undated paintings,
such as Man Sharpening a Quill Pen.[5] Thematically, it seems likely that thisdelightful painting once belonged to a series of the five senses, where it[6]

would have portrayed either the sense of sight or the sense of sound.

Fig 2. Jan Steen, Drinker, oil onpanel, 37.4 x 29.8 cm, Smith
College Museum of Art,Northampton, Massachusetts, Giftof Adeline Flint Wing, class of1898 and Caroline Roberta Wing,
class of 1896, SC 1957:36- Wouter Kloek, 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
Page 4 of 5Endnotes

1. Wilhelm Martin, Gerard Dou, des Meisters Gemälde (Stuttgart, 1913), 27; and Ronni Baer,“The Paintings of Gerrit Dou 1613–1675” (PhD diss. New York University, 1990), no. 1.
2. See, for example, Rembrandt’s Mother Reading the Bible in the Musée du Louvre in Paris.
Wilhelm Martin, Gerard Dou, des Meisters Gemälde (Stuttgart, 1913), 39; Jacques Foucart,Catalogue des peintures flamandes et hollandaises du musée du Louvre (Paris, 2009), 122,inv. 1223; and Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou 1613–1675” (PhD diss. New YorkUniversity, 1990), no. 3.
3. Wilhelm Martin, Gerard Dou, des Meisters Gemälde (Stuttgart, 1913), 100; and Ronni Baer,“The Paintings of Gerrit Dou 1613–1675” (PhD diss. New York University, 1990), no. 96a.
The costume in this painting, however, displays less attention to detail.
4. Karel Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no. 124.
5. Karel Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen (Rotterdam, 1980), no. B-58.
Although its attribution is doubted, the work is part of a small series of simple paintings of asingle figure, most of which belong to the series Five Senses.
6. In that case, its oval shape suggests that it is the only surviving piece of such a series.

ProvenancePossibly Dr. H. Auersburg.
Dr. Herman Neuerberg, Cologne-Marienburg, 1925.
Antoon von Welie (1866–1956), The Hague, 1935 [Douwes Fine Art, Amsterdam, 1938, no.
97].
Irmgard Rodenkirchen, Schwangau/Füssen, 1955.
Private collection (sale, Sotheby’s, London, 12 December 2002, no. 33A [Salomon Lilian B.
V., Amsterdam, 2003, no. 23]).
From whom acquired by the present owner.

References
Burgemeister, Wendela. “An Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug.” In Old Masters.
© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
Page 5 of 5

Sales cat. Salomon Lilian B. V. Amsterdam and New York, 2004, 68–69, no. 23.

Technical Summary
The support is a single oval plank of vertically grained oak.[1] A horizontally oriented bevel acrossthe midpoint of the lower edge indicates the oval support was cut from a beveled rectangularpanel. The panel is unthinned and uncradled and does not have machine tool marks. There is one
paper label but no wax collection seals, import stamps, stencils or panel maker’s marks.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. The ground does not spill over onto thepanel edges and is chipped along the outer edges of the front of the panel, which further suggests
the oval support was either trimmed or cut from a rectangular panel after the composition wasexecuted. The oil paint has been built up in successive thin layers and smoothly applied with nouse of impasto.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. A few
compositional changes are visible in the images and as pentimenti. A diagonal line of raised light
paint below the figure’s proper left elbow and a raised shape similar to the shape of the paper inthe figure’s proper left hand suggests the paper was lowered and shifted towards the figure.[2] Inaddition, the figure’s proper right hand, shoulder and back have been shifted toward the right,
and her elbow was lowered and covers a rounded form, upon which it presumably previouslyrested. The X-radiograph is extremely thin and only the paper in the figure’s proper left hand andthe diagonal line below the figure’s proper left elbow are visible.
A light yellow pentimento showing through the figure’s blue skirt indicates a change in position of
the figure’s knees and that the blue apron was added; these changes are confirmed by theinfrared images. The vertically oriented apron folds obscure a diagonal line, which originallydefined the figure’s waist.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 2003 and remains in an excellent state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination only. The right panel edge
as viewed from the front appears to have been prepared for dendrochronology sometime
prior to the painting’s acquisition.
2. Located ca. 1 cm above and ca. 1 cm to the left of the piece of paper’s position in the final
painted composition.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection