Jan Steen(Leiden 1626 – 1679 Leiden)

How to cite
Bakker, Piet. “Jan Steen” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock
Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artists/jan-steen/ (archived June 2020).
A PDF of every version of this biography 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.

Jan Steen was born in Leiden in 1626. He was the eldest son of Havick Steen (1602–70) and Elisabet
Capiteyn (1606–69), the daughter of a town clerk.[1] The couple was Catholic and had at least eight children.[2]Havick gave his profession as grain merchant when the banns of his marriage were posted in 1625, but as of1629 he was working in the family-owned brewery, called the “Red Halberd.” In 1632 Havick and his wife
drew up their will, in which they appointed each other heir to an estimated capital of 10,000 guilders. Steen,thus, came from an upper middle-class milieu. His artistic interest may have been aroused by his father’suncle, Pieter Dircksz Steen (1561–after 1593), who was both a painter and a goldsmith. Furthermore, throughthe marriage of his aunt Maria Steen (1596–1649) with Justus Livius de Rechte (1606–49) in 1632, he may
also have been introduced in his early years to the work of Jan Lievens (1607–74), Justus’s younger brother.
On 18 March 1648 Steen registered as master painter in the recently founded Guild of Saint Luke in Leiden,
but had presumably already been active as a painter for some time. According to Arnold Houbraken, Jan vanGoyen (1596–1656) was his teacher, as was later confirmed by Jacob Campo Weyerman. The latter alsoclaims that Steen had trained earlier in Utrecht with Nicolaus Knüpfer (1603–55) and in Haarlem with Adriaen
van Ostade (1610–84). Their information came from the Leiden painter Carel de Moor (1655–1738), a goodfriend of Steen.
More than a year after entering the Leiden painters’ guild, Steen turned up in The Hague, where he may haveassisted his former teacher Van Goyen to produce his monochrome landscapes, which were in great demandin the Dutch Republic.[3] According to Houbraken, Steen got along well with Van Goyen, and not just with him.
Houbraken extensively and very humorously describes how Steen seduced and impregnated Van Goyen’s
daughter Margriet (1624–69), and how he subsequently announced the news to his teacher and his father.
The two men had little choice in the matter other than to give the couple their blessing. The young lovers wed© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jan SteenPage 2 of 6on 3 October 1649.[4]Steen continued working in The Hague and quickly built up his reputation.[5] Nevertheless, he left the court cityin 1654 and settled in Delft, where he rented the brewery “The Snake.”[6] His decision to work as a brewer may
have been prompted by the ruinous state of the art market resulting from the First Anglo-Dutch War.
Unfortunately, the war also adversely affected the brewing industry, and Steen soon landed in serious
financial difficulties.[7] Even though his contract would only expire on 1 November 1657, he was calling himself
a “gewesen brouwer” (former brewer) four months prior to that date. His father-in-law Jan van Goyen had
died a year earlier, but the bequest he left Steen and his wife brought them no relief. Van Goyen’s estate wasso heavily riddled with debt that it had to be auctioned, the proceeds of which only just paid off the claims of
his numerous creditors.
After his failed Delft venture, Steen returned to Leiden, where in 1658 he once more paid his dues to thepainters’ guild. Again, his residence there was brief. The record of his first contribution states that he: “uyt destad vertrokken [was]” (had left town). His new place of residence was Warmond, just outside of Leiden,
where he paid the village tax in 1660. His move to Warmond can probably be traced back to his contacts withLeiden Remonstrants who—because it was prohibited in Leiden—had founded a church in Warmond. Thischurch was not only attended by Steen’s uncle and aunt, but also by his good friend, the artist Frans van
Mieris the Elder (1635–81). This church was built with the permission of the Lord of Warmond, Jacob van
Wassenaer van Duivevoorde (1627–86), a Catholic. Steen depicted the latter’s castle, called Lockhorst or
Oud-Teylingen, in the background of his famous Poultry Yard, which he most likely painted in Warmond.[8]Steen’s stay in Warmond, however, was also short-lived. In 1660 Steen and his family were suddenly back inHaarlem, where he joined the Guild of Saint Luke in 1661. The years that followed were the most productive of
his career. However, when the Second Anglo-Dutch War broke out in March 1665, the art market was once
more critically affected and Steen’s workshop faced stormy financial weather.[9] His situation worsened further
when his wife died in 1669, leaving him to care for their many offspring. According to Houbraken andWeyerman, the painter never regained control of his household.
In 1670 Steen returned to Leiden for the third time. Both of his parents had recently died and the house on theLangebrug devolved to him. That same year he also rejoined the painters’ guild, this time as an establishedand well-respected artist; he was immediately appointed headman (a position he held three times) andsubsequently dean. These (unpaid) positions, naturally, did not alleviate his dire financial problems and so in
Leiden, too, creditors lined up at his door. When the art market experienced its worst crisis in 1672, the Yearof Disaster, the city council licensed Steen to operate an inn called “The Peace” (De Vreede). Steen regularlyreceived other painters there, including his good friend Frans van Mieris, with whom he often had a drink too
many.[10]In the spring of 1673, Steen’s status as widower ended when he married Maria Dircksdr van Egmond (d.
1687) in Leiderdorp. She was the widow of Nicolaes Hercules, a book dealer who had gone bankrupt in 1661.
Maria also had a small business: she sold home-boiled sheep’s heads and feet at the market. The income
she brought in was meager, thus Jan’s second wife, too, was unable to relieve the family’s financialproblems. The painter died in 1679 and was buried in the family grave in the Pieterskerk in Leiden on 3
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Jan SteenPage 3 of 6February. He left Maria van Egmond behind with a host of children and a debt-ridden estate.

- Piet Bakker, 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jan Steen
Page 4 of 6Endnotes

1. The Leiden Catholic baptismal registers have been preserved only as of 1646. That Steen
was most probably born in 1626 can be deduced from the only known document containing
information about his age. He enrolled at Leiden University at the age of 20 in November
1646, which means that Steen was born in 1625 or 1626. Given that his parents married in
November of 1625, Steen was most likely born in 1626. Incidentally, this does not mean thathe actually studied there. His enrollment would have been prompted by certain advantages
this entailed, such as exemption from taxes on beer and wine—a particularly lucrative privilege
for the son of a brewer. Steen’s enrollment does presuppose that he attended Latin school.
See Marten J. Bok, “The Artist’s Life,” in Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller, ed. H. Perry
Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (New Haven, 1996), 25–37.
2. Seven of Jan’s brothers and sisters are known by name. His brother Wijbrand (1638–1704)
became a wine merchant and married Catharina de Vois (d. ca. 1697), daughter of the wine
merchant/organist Alewijn de Vois (d. 1667), and sister of the painter Ary de Vois (ca.
1632–80), like Jan Steen a pupil of Nicolaes Knüpfer.
His sister Margareta, too, entered into a marriage with an artistic side. In 1656 she married
the Catholic goldsmith Vechter van Griecken, son of the painter Anthony van Griecken. In thatsame year the estate of Anthony’s widow was inventoried (see Regionaal Archief Leiden,Notarial Archives 877, deed 29), and in 1657 that of Helena van Swanenburgh, widow ofAnthony’s cousin (or nephew) Jan van Griecken, likewise a goldsmith (see Regionaal ArchiefLeiden, Notarial Archives 762, deed 351). The former estate included “een stuckie van Steenin de keucken” (a work by Steen in the kitchen) and the latter a “boere kermis van JanSteen” (peasant kermis by Jan Steen). These are the two earliest mentions of Steen’s workin Leiden inventories.
3. Eric Jan Sluijter, “Jan van Goyen als marktleider, virtuoos en vernieuwer,” in Jan van Goyen,
ed. Christiaan Vogelaar (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1996), 38–59.
4. It is certain that Steen and Margriet van Goyen married in October 1649. A baptismal
certificate of a child conceived before they were married is not to be found. This led Bredius
to believe that Houbraken’s account had to refer to the painter Jacques de Claeuw(1623–94). Like Steen, he also worked for Van Goyen, and married Van Goyen’s daughter
Maria in the spring of the same year. Both De Claeuw and Steen baptized daughters thatsummer. See Marten J. Bok, “The Artist’s Life,” in Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller, ed. H.
Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. National Gallery ofArt, Washington, D.C.; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (New Haven, 1996), 28.
5. For example, in 1650 the Utrecht estate auctioneer Johan van Rhenen sent a picture of a© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jan SteenPage 5 of 6peasant wedding by Steen to Denmark to be sold there. Furthermore, in July 1651 thecommercial agent Harald Appelboom (1612–74) purchased four paintings by Steen at aHague auction on behalf of the Swedish field marshal Carl Gustaf Wrangel (1613–76). SeeMarten J. Bok, “The Artist’s Life,” in Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller ed. H. Perry Chapman,
Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington,D.C.; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (New Haven, 1996), 28–29.
6. It should be noted that during his Hague years he remained active in Leiden, where he hadmaintained his guild membership. In the spring of 1653 he paid his dues for two years, and it
was recorded in the guild accounts that he had “resided out of town in the previous years”(de voorgaende jaren uijt dese stad gewoont).
7. Shortly after the Peace of 1654, the number of business bankruptcies rose substantially incities such as Amsterdam and Utrecht, and this will have been the case for Delft as well.
Aside from problems in the art and beer markets, Steen will also have been affected by thecatastrophic impact on the local economy of the disastrous gunpowder explosion in the Delftarsenal on 12 October 1654. See Marten J. Bok, “The Artist’s Life,” in Jan Steen, Painter andStoryteller, ed. H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (New Haven, 1996),
29–30. Moreover, see the biography of Carel Fabritius (1622–54) in this catalogue.
8. The Poultry Yard, 1660 (The Hague, Mauritshuis).
9. Marten J. Bok, “The Artist’s Life,” in Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller, ed. H. PerryChapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art,Washington, D.C.; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (New Haven, 1996), 31.
10. See the biography of Frans van Mieris in this catalogue.

Literature
Houbraken,Arnold.

De

grooteschouburgh

derNederlantsche

konstschilders

enschilderessen. Amsterdam, 1718–21; revised edition published in The Hague, 1753; reprinted
in Amsterdam, 1980. 3: 12–26.
De Vries, Lyckle. “Achttiende- en negentiende-eeuwse auteurs over Jan Steen.” Oud Holland
87 (1973): 227–39.
Prins, Yvonne, and Jan Smit. “De naaste verwanten van Jan Steen.” Jaarboek van het
Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 51 (1997): 153–235.
Bok, Marten J. “The Artist’s Life.” In Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller. Edited by H. Perry
Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. 25–37. Exh. cat. National Gallery ofArt, Washington, D.C.; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. New Haven, 1996.
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Jan Steen
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Buijsen, Edwin, et al. Haagse Schilders in de gouden eeuw. The Hague, 1998, 238–42 and349.
Van Thiel-Stroman, Irene. “Jan Steen.” In Painting in Haarlem 1500–1850: The Collection ofthe Frans Hals Museum. Edited by Pieter Biesboer and Neeltje Köhler, 311–13. Ghent, 2006.

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