Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller - Hardcover

Chapman, H. Perry; Kloek, Wouter Th.; Wheelock Jr., Arthur K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300067933 ISBN 13: 9780300067934

Publisher: National Gallery Washington, 1996

Synopsis

Jan Steen (1626-1679) is one of the most admired and quintessential seventeenth-century Dutch painters. His repertoire included genre, portraits, refined images of upper-class life, and complex, witty comic narratives. He also painted religious and mythological scenes that vary from quiet and intimate to grand and melodramatic. In his brushwork he displayed an astonishing range, from extremely fine to remarkably loose, even within a single painting.
Written by H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., with contributions by other noted art historians, this book draws on the most recent scholarship and archival research to reassess Steen within the context of seventeenth-century Netherlandish artistic, literary, and cultural movements. A translation of Arnold Houbraken's biography of Steen, written in the eighteenth century, is included, as well as a biographical essay that uses numerous contemporary sources to present the most comprehensive profile on Steen yet published. Other essays discuss Steen's relationship to the theater and to other Dutch painters of the time, his critical reception, and his varied self-portrayals. Fifty of Steen's paintings, chosen to demonstrate his consummate skill as both painter and storyteller, are catalogued in detail.
This lavishly illustrated book is the catalogue for an exhibition of the works of Jan Steen, coorganized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

About this title

From Library Journal:

While the extroverted comic vitality that marks the painting of Jan Steen will not engender the hymnal praise evoked by the National Gallery's recent exhibition of Jan Vermeer's art, this important catalog proffers another splendid yet very different vision of Dutch Catholic pictorial genius in the 17th century. The volume's several prefatory scholarly essays provide an intellectual context for an appreciation of the character and content of Steen's work. The more traditional essays offer a documentary reconstruction of the artist's life, stylistic development, and working methods, while others more provocatively attempt to offer deeper insight into the artist's persona, the problems of interpreting the paintings, and their relationship to a literary and social milieu. This handsomely illustrated exhibition catalog (the show is also at the National Gallery) includes not only fine color illustrations of the 49 exhibited paintings but also much comparative visual material. Making minimal reference to the essays, an ample text fittingly describes the individual paintings and suggests their likely meanings, sources, and relationships to a larger artistic ambience. An important addition to academic art history collections.?Robert Cahn, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: National Gallery Washington
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0300067933
• ISBN 13: 9780300067934
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272