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

ca. 1660
oil on oval panel
22 x 17.3 cm
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Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
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How to cite
Kloek, Wouter. “Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rded.

EditedbyArthurK.

WheelockJr.

andLaraYeager-Crasselt.

NewYork,

2020–23.

https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

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Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and Singing
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Situated against a dark background the seated old woman in Jan Steen’s painting

Comparative Figures

joyously sings as she holds a sheet of music in her left hand, the promise 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 and blue.
In executing this work, Steen paid exceptional care to the rendering of the woman’s
fur head-covering, an article of clothing that also appears in paintings 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 thishead covering and collar also owes much to Dou, as in that master’s depictions ofRembrandt’s mother from the early 1630s,[2] and his Old Woman Reading a Book, ca.
1660, which is also in St. Petersburg (fig 1).[3] Even the upright oval shape of thepanel may owe its inspiration to Dou. Steen rarely painted on panels with this shape,

Fig 1. Gerrit Dou, Old Woman
Reading a Book, oil on panel, 26 x 20cm, The State Hermitage Museum,Saint Petersburg, ГЭ-885 Album / Art
Resource, NY

but Dou often did. These similarities in costume, technique and panel shape, however,make all the more evident the differences in the behavior of Steen’s slightly tipsy andearthy old crone and the more pious women seen in Dou’s paintings. It is almost as
though Steen intended to poke fun at that artist’s virtuous old women.
Steen’s oeuvre contains few points of reference for dating this work. Nevertheless, anapproximate date for the Leiden Collection painting of around 1660 seems likely
because of the careful rendering of the old woman’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, andwhere 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 the five senses, where it would
have portrayed either the sense of sight or the sense of sound.[6]Fig 2. Jan Steen, Drinker, oil on panel,
37.4 x 29.8 cm, Smith College
Museum of Art, Northampton,Massachusetts, Gift of Adeline FlintWing, class of 1898 and Caroline
Roberta Wing, class of 1896, SC
1957:36- Wouter Kloek, 2017

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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, “ThePaintings 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. WilhelmMartin, Gerard Dou, des Meisters Gemälde (Stuttgart, 1913), 39; Jacques Foucart, Catalogue despeintures 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 York University, 1990), no. 3.
3. Wilhelm Martin, Gerard Dou, des Meisters Gemälde (Stuttgart, 1913), 100; and Ronni Baer, “ThePaintings of Gerrit Dou 1613–1675” (PhD diss. New York University, 1990), no. 96a. The costume inthis 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 a single figure, most ofwhich 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. Sales cat.
Salomon Lilian B. V. Amsterdam and New York, 2004, 68–69, no. 23.
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Old Woman with a Fur Cap Holding a Jug and SingingPage 5 of 5

Technical Summary
The support is a single oval plank of vertically grained oak.[1] A horizontally oriented bevel across themidpoint of the lower edge indicates the oval support was cut from a beveled rectangular panel. The panel isunthinned 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 paneledges 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 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 the paper in the figure’s proper left
hand suggests the paper was lowered and shifted towards the figure.[2] In addition, the figure’s proper righthand, 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 inthe 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 thefigure’s knees and that the blue apron was added; these changes are confirmed by the infrared images. The
vertically oriented apron folds obscure a diagonal line, which originally defined 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’sacquisition.
2. Located ca. 1 cm above and ca. 1 cm to the left of the piece of paper’s position in the final paintedcomposition.

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