Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding aJug and Singing

ca. 1660

Jan Steen(Leiden 1626 –1679 Leiden)

22 x 17.3 cm

oil on oval panel
JS-100© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
Page 2 of 7

How To Cite
Kloek, Wouter. "Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing." In The Leiden Collection
Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
This page is available on the site's Archive. PDF of every version of this page is available on the Archive,and the Archive is managed by a permanent URL. Archival copies will never be deleted. New versions areadded only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
Page 3 of 7

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 festivemood. 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 by Gerrit Dou (1613–75), for example in Dou’s Rembrandtesque
Scholar Reading in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.[1] The
attention Steen paid to articulating this head covering and collar also owes
much to Dou, as in that master’s depictions of Rembrandt’s mother fromFig 1. Gerrit Dou, Old Woman
Reading a Book, oil on panel, 26
x 20 cm, The State Hermitage
Museum, Saint Petersburg,
ГЭ-885 Album / Art Resource, NY

the early 1630s,[2] and his Old Woman Reading a Book , ca. 1660, whichis also in St. Petersburg (fig 1).[3] Even the upright oval shape of the panel
may owe its inspiration to Dou. Steen rarely painted on panels with thisshape, 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.
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 ofpainting at that time. One somewhat comparable work is Drinker at Smith
College, c. 1660, which is also executed in a detailed manner, and whereFig 2. Jan Steen, Drinker, oil onpanel, 37.4 x 29.8 cm, Smith
College Museum of Art,Northampton, Massachusetts,
Gift of Adeline Flint Wing, class of1898 and Caroline Roberta Wing,
class of 1896, SC 1957:36

the drinker is similarly posed (fig 2).[4] The way the old woman squints
while reading the words 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 this delightful painting once belonged to a series of thefive senses, where it would have portrayed either the sense of sight or thesense of sound.[6]© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
Page 4 of 7-Wouter Kloek© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
Page 5 of 7Endnotes
1. Wilhelm Martin, Gerard Dou, des Meisters Gemälde (Stuttgart, 1913), 27; and Ronni Baer,“The Paintings of Gerrit Dou 1613–1675” (Ph.D. 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” (Ph.D. diss., NewYork University, 1990), no. 3.
3. Wilhelm Martin, Gerard Dou, des Meisters Gemälde (Stuttgart, 1913), 100; and Ronni Baer,“The Paintings of Gerrit Dou 1613–1675” (Ph.D. 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 paintingsof a single 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.
© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
Page 6 of 7

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
the panel 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 thecomposition was executed. The oil paint has been built up in successive thin layers and smoothly
applied with no use 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 thepaper in the figure’s proper left hand suggests the paper was lowered and shifted towards thefigure.[2] In addition, 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
previously rested. The X-radiograph is extremely thin and only the paper in the figure’s proper
left hand and the 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 paneledge 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.

© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
Page 7 of 7

© 2017 The Leiden Collection