The Family Concert

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

1666

Jan Steen (Dutch, 1626–1679)

This well-appointed interior sets the scene for the courtship ritual of music-making, through which men and women became acquainted by singing and playing instruments together. The boy in the foreground, mimicking the adults, strums a cello with a pipe and breaks a string, a subtle allusion to the perils of unbridled passion. Jan Steen, one of the Dutch Republic’s most prolific comic painters, crafted his scenes upon the contemporary notion that comedy mirrors everyday life.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Jan Steen
Title: The Family Concert
Place: Holland (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1666
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 86.6 × 101 cm (34 1/8 × 39 3/4 in.); Framed: 101.6 × 115.6 × 5.1 cm (40 × 45 1/2 × 2 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Timothy B. Blackstone
Reference Number: 1891.65
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/561/manifest.json

John Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, vol. 4 (London, 1833), pp. 59–60, no. 176.
Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of Works of Old Dutch Masters and Other Pictures (Chicago, 1890), p. 29; reprinted (Chicago, 1892).
“Chicago an Art Center,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9, 1890, p. 1.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Objects in the Museum (Chicago, 1901), p. 141, no. 4.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Objects in the Museum (Chicago, 1904), p. 147, no. 4.
Art Institute of Chicago, Important Facts Regarding the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1905), pp. 6, 9, ill.
Masters in Art: A Series of Illustrated Monographs, vol. 6 (Boston, 1905), p. 293.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Sculpture, Paintings and Other Objects (Chicago, 1907), p. 158, no. 4.
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century based on the Work of John Smith, vol. 1 (London, 1907), p. 115, no. 442.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Collections Illustrated: With a Historical Sketch and Description of the Museum (Chicago, 1910), p. 22.
Art Institute of Chicago, Handbook of Sculpture, Architecture, Paintings, and Drawings (Chicago, 1920), p. 18, no. 4.
Eduard Trautscholdt, “Steen, Jan,” in Thieme-Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 31 (Leipzig, 1931), p. 512.
Charles Fabens Kelley, “Chicago: Record Years,” Art News 51, 4 (1952), p. 59.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), pp. 187, 440, ill.
John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (New York, 1970), pp. 261, 286, ill; reprinted (London, 1977) and (London, 1987).
Peter C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986), p. 48, 53, ill.
Walter Liedtke, “Toward a History of Dutch Genre Painting II: The South Holland Tradition,” in Roland E. Fleischer and Susan Scott Munshower, eds, The Age of Rembrandt: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting (University Park, PA, 1988), p. 128, ill.
Walter Liedtke, “The Collectors and Their Ideals,” in Ben Broos, Great Dutch Paintings from America, exh. cat. (The Hague, Mauritshuis, 1990), p. 35.
Jon Margolis, “Off-the-Wall Lessons in History: One Man’s Unorthodox View of the Art Institute of Chicago,” Chicago Tribune Magazine (September 17, 1995), p. 15, ill.
M. Therese Southgate, The Art of JAMA: One Hundred Covers and Essays from the Journal of the American Medical Association (St. Louis, 1997), pp. 6–7, ill.
Mariët Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Seen: Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century (Zwolle, 1997), p. 246 n. 48.
Dieter Beaujean, Bilder in Bildern: Studien zur niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts (Weimar, 2001), p. 137 n. 452.
Celia Hilliard, “‘The Prime Mover”: Charles L. Hutchinson and the Making of the Art Institute of Chicago,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 36, 1 (2010), p. 43.

Baltimore Museum of Art, Musical Instruments and Their Portrayal in Art, April 26–June 2, 1946, no. 35.
Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Paintings of 17th Century Dutch Interiors, December 1, 1967–January 7, 1968, no. 19.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Case for Wine, July 11–September 20, 2009, no cat.

Sir Charles Bagot, Bart., by 1833 [according to Smith 1833]. Presumably Prince Anatole Demidoff, Villa San Donato, near Florence (died 1870); by descent to his nephew Prince Paul Demidoff (died 1885) and included in the sale of the contents of Villa San Donato, Pillet, Mannheim, and Le Roy, Florence, March 15, 1880, lot 1054, bought in; remained in the Demidoff collection, passing into the possession of Paul Demidoff’s widow, Helena Troubetskoi, Pratolino, near Florence; included in the group of 13 paintings from the Demidoff collection sold to trustees of the Art Institute through Durand-Ruel, Paris, in 1890; purchase price reimbursed by Timothy B. Blackstone, 1891.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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