Lot 1066 Dα

Peasants have gathered to make merry in front of a tavern. In the centre a family rests on the ground, looking at the revel, the peasants dance, drink and smoke, some of them have ascended a boat that shakes dangerously, parting for a ride on the canal.
Such representations of revelling peasants gave painters the opportunity to depict the lower classes in a humorous way whereas the higher art forms of history painting and portraiture represented persons of higher rank in an exemplary way. Thus the physiognomy of the peasants is bawdy, their moves clumsy, their conduct immoderate and dull. Jan Steen was a skillful storyteller with an unfailing repertoire of comic figures. Arnold Houbraken, in his famous biography of Jan Steen, praised the opulence of Steen´s inventions and the true-to-life figures, calling them "naturalistic", "ingenious", and "painted after life". Steen, he concluded, knew how to characterise persons; according to him, one could tell by the conduct of the figures, "who was the peasant and who the master".

An interesting detail is the shop sign of the inn. It shows an elephant and allows one to draw a conclusion about the commissioner of the painting (Washington/Amsterdam 1996/1997, p. 196). The brewery "Den Oliphant" was situated in Haarlem and belonged to Gerrit Schouten, a wealthy brewer, who like Steen was a catholic and who was a patron of the artist. The close relationship between the brewer and the artist (who himself was the son of a brewer and during his time in Delft ran his own brewery) shows the "Self-portrait with Geritt Schouten and his Family" dated 1659/60 (fig. 1; The Nelson-Atkin Museum of Art, Kansas City). The decrepit building was surely not meant to represent Schouten´s brewery built in 1606 whose impressive building still stands at the Spaarne in Haalrem. But the reference to "Den Oliphant" shows who commissioned such genre paintings: wealthy bourgeois patrons who enjoyed Steen´s comic talent as a storyteller.