JAN STEEN. Forty Reproductions in Photogravure. With a Critical Study
by F. Schmidt Degener and Notes on the Illustrations by Dr. H. E. Van Gelder. - Translated by G. J. Renier. (John Lane. 52s. 6d.)-Art critics outside Holland have been slow to admit that Jan Steen was a great painter as well as an amusing story teller. Fromentin, who did so much to revive interest in the seventeenth-century Dutch Masters, took no notice of Jan Steen. No English writer has devoted a book to him, and few articles have been written about him either here or in France. It is an agreeable surprise, therefore, to have a fine quarto with forty excellent photogravures of Jan Steen's pictures, and a spirited and informing essay by the learned Director of the Rijksmuseum. Just as superfine people used to sneer at Dickens for intro- ducing us to " low company, so many people to-day think Jan Steen a second-rate painter because he delighted in incident, and very often coarse incident. Yet even a glance at these forty examples-not all of his best, but fairly repre- sentative-should be enough to show that Jan Steen was a very great painter as well as a satirist. The compositions are harmonious, whether the figures are few or many ; the details are superbly rendered ; the drawing of the figures is masterly and full of life. Those who think of Jan Steen as the painter of noisy parties should look at " The Inn Garden (Berlin) or the Music Lessons " in our two great London galleries ; nothing could be more refined than these. He was a man of many moods, the most versatile of genre- painters. His " Disciples at Emmaus " may not be wholly successful, but it shows that he could handle a Scriptural theme effectively when he liked. The reference to " keugel- spel "-not " beugelspel " (p. 81)-as " a form of golf " should be corrected ; it was a kind of croquet. The " Family Party " acquired from the Steengracht collection for the Hague Gallery in 1913 was certainly not priced at " nearly £170,000 " (p. 74) ; if we remember rightly, about £16,000 was paid for it-the record for a Jan Steen.
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