Watermark: None

Slightly damaged along left border; some light brown stains

…; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-1878), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-1883), Amsterdam; sale, Jacob de Vos Jbzn, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 501, fl. 25, to the dealer R.W.P. de Vries, Amsterdam;¹¹Copy RKD. …; donated by the Vereniging Rembrandt to the museum, 1888

Object number: RP-T-1888-A-1514(V)

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The studies on this double-sided sheet are among the few authentic drawings by Jan Steen. In his painted Landscape with Skittle Players in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. GG 6319), both motifs appear with only minor changes.⁹⁹This was first observed by J.Q. van Regteren Altena, ‘Hoe tekende Jan Steen?’, Oud Holland 60 (1943), pp. 97-117, the painting erroneously mentioned as in Cape Town. Opinions differ about that painting’s date. A date of circa 1670 was suggested by De Vries (1977), Kloek (1996) and Jansen (2004) because two background figures wear costumes that were in fashion at that date.¹⁰¹⁰L. de Vries, Jan Steen, de ‘kluchtschilder’, Groningen 1977 (PhD diss., Rijksuniversiteit Groningen), p. 71; Kloek in H.P. Chapman et al., Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller, exh. cat. Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1996-97, p. 169; Jansen in J. Giltaij (ed.), Senses and Sins: Dutch Painters of Daily Life in the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Frankfurt-am-Main (Städelsches Kunstinstitut and Städtische Galerie) 2004-05, p. 202. However, in the opinion of Schatborn, the painting should be assigned on stylistic grounds to the first half of the 1650s,¹¹¹¹P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 143. a view endorsed on the website of Kunsthistorisches Museum. It is possible that the two figures with later costumes were changed or added only later, especially given Steen’s sometimes unorthodox way of painting and his apparent habit of temporarily leaving paintings incomplete.¹²¹²Cf. W.T. Kloek, Jan Steen (1626-1679), Zwolle 2005, pp. 53 and 61. Schatborn’s earlier proposed dating for the painting, and thus for the Rijksmuseum drawing, is confirmed by the fact that the study on the verso was apparently reused for a painting of circa 1663, Skittle Players outside a Tavern in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG 2560).¹³¹³H.P. Chapman et al., Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller, exh. cat. Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1996-97, no. 22.

Both these sketches are typical working material of a painter, not made for the delight of a collector, but in direct preparation for painted figures.¹⁴¹⁴P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 79. For the man smoking a pipe who is seated on the ground in the Vienna painting, Steen posed his model on a low bench. At upper left of the sheet, he explored an alternative version of the figure’s right arm, with a better articulated and more foreshortened forearm. In the Vienna painting, however, he adhered to his full-figure sketch. In the verso study of a skittle player, Steen focussed his attention on the figure’s costume and, in a separate study at right, on the way the white shirt is tucked into the figure’s trousers.

If Jan Steen, like most other seventeenth-century artists, followed this standard working practice, why are there so few of his drawings known today? The only other universally accepted drawing is Moses and the Crown of the Pharaoh in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv. no. WA 1863.282),¹⁵¹⁵J. Shoaf Turner, ‘Another Secure Preparatory Drawing by Jan Steen’, Master Drawings 47 (2009), no. 4, pp. 433-36, fig. 1. a study – with a large paper correction – for the painting of the subject from circa 1670 in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (inv. no. 1167).¹⁶¹⁶Ibid., fig. 2 (erroneously as still in the private collection of the Wetzlar famly). Are others still hiding under wrong attributions, did Steen treat his drawings with less care, or were they lost or even destroyed after his death?¹⁷¹⁷Kloek (Jan Steen (1626-1679), Zwolle 2005, p. 50) has argued that Steen, unlike other painters, could do without figure studies and drew them only occasionally, possibly for didactic reasons, i.e. to explain the function of figure studies to an apprentice.

The inscription with the artist’s name at lower right of the recto seems to be in the same hand as inscriptions on inv. no. RP-T-1900-A-4338, possibly that of the dealer Jan Coenrad Pruyssenaar (1748-1814); see also inv. no. RP-T-1911-69.

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

J.Q. van Regteren Altena, ‘Hoe tekende Jan Steen?’, Oud Holland 60 (1943), pp. 112-13, 117 (fig. 17); K.G. Boon, Holländische Zeichnungen der Rembrandt-Zeit, ausgewählt aus öffentlichen und privaten Sammlungen in den Niederlanden, exh. cat. Hamburg (Hamburger Kunsthalle) 1961, no. 119, pl. 31; P. Schatborn, Hollandse genre-tekeningen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1973, no. 96; P. Schatborn and K.G. Boon, Dutch Genre Drawings of the Seventeenth Century: A Loan Exhibition from Dutch Museums, Foundations and Private Collections, exh. cat. New York (Pierpont Morgan Library)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago) 1972-73, no. 96; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, 2 vols., Hamburg 1981, I, p. 64; P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, pp. 79, 143; H.P. Chapman et al., Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller, exh. cat. Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1996-97, p. 171 (n. 6); J. Walsh, Jan Steen: The Drawing Lesson, Malibu 1996, p. 14 (fig. 9); M. Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen: Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century, Zwolle 1997, p. 118 (fig. 54); J. Giltaij (ed.), Senses and Sins: Dutch Painters of Daily Life in the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Frankfurt-am-Main (Städelsches Kunstinstitut and Städtische Galerie) 2004-05, p. 202 (fig. 1); W.T. Kloek, Jan Steen (1626-1679), Zwolle 2005, pp. 49-50, 60-61; J. Shoaf Turner, ‘Another Secure Preparatory Drawing by Jan Steen’, Master Drawings 47 (2009), no. 4, pp. 433, 436; A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), II, p. 530, under no. 1002 (n. 7)

A. Stefes, 2019, 'Jan Havicksz. Steen, Study of a Man Playing Skittles / Recto: Study of a Seated Man Smoking a Pipe, The Hague, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200144466