Smoking women

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Smoking women (Jan Steen)
Smoking women
Jan Steen , around 1661–1670
Oil on canvas, drawn on oak
28.5 x 23.5 cm
Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg , exhibited in Oranienburg Palace

Smoking women is the title of a painting by the Dutch painter Jan Steen . The picture was painted in oil on canvas and later drawn onto oak wood. It has the dimensions 28.5 × 23.5 cm. The baroque painting ,created around 1661–1670,shows a genre scenewith a young and an elderly woman sitting at a table anddevotingthemselves to smoking tobacco . It belongs to the collection of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg and is exhibited in Oranienburg Palace.

Image description

The painting shows the interior of an indefinite room in dark tones, in which two women are sitting at a wooden table. The table, moved to the right from the center of the picture, is of simple design; simple boards form the table top, side walls and a visible strut. In the bright light, a young woman is sitting on a chair to the left of the table, the back of which has a turned ornament. She wears a reddish silk jacket with a white collar and front fur trim and a long dark skirt. Her hair, combed back, is pinned up behind her head. The young woman bends her upper body slightly forward and supports her left forearm on the table. While she is holding a piece of tobacco with the fingers of her left hand on the table board, she cuts it into small pieces with a knife in her right hand. As a result of such work, shredded tobacco lies next to it on the table, where a clay pipe for smoking tobacco is already ready. In addition, there is a glass bottle on the table with a pewter spoon in front of it. Possibly an indication of the consumption of alcohol. At the side behind the table in the shadow area is a second, much older woman. She is wrapped in dark clothing, with a light cloth tied around her head and a dark cloth over it. With her right hand she has brought a tobacco pipe to her mouth, giving the impression that she is smoking. While the old woman looks in front of herself in a hunched position, the young woman has turned her head and is looking at her. For the art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan , the younger looks over at the older with the "look of consent". The picture is signed on the table with “J Steen”.

Women enjoying tobacco

Jan Steen was the son of a brewer and temporarily owned a brewery in Delft . He was therefore well aware of the living habits of his contemporaries, especially life in taverns. In his oeuvre there are numerous motifs with happy or even drunken companies. Thematically, one of these motifs is the picture Smoking Women , which presumably dates from the artist's time in Haarlem, i.e. was created between 1661 and 1670. The related painting A Man Blowing Smoke on a Drunk Woman ( National Gallery , London) also dates from this period and is dated 1660–1665. A similar subject is shown in the picture Sleeping Woman and Smoker ( Hermitage , Saint Petersburg ) from around 1660 . In both pictures a young woman is sitting at a table, clearly marked by alcohol consumption. In the background there are one or two men who smoke a pipe and are also into alcohol. In the picture The Wine is a Mocker, painted around 1663–1664 ( Norton Simon Museum , Pasadena ), the drunken young woman is already lying in front of a house on the ground. There are numerous people around them who make fun of them and sometimes drink alcohol themselves. Her skirt has already slid up, a man is touching her leg in stockings, so she literally goes to the laundry . A clay pipe lies on the ground in the foreground.

  • Jan Steen:
    A man blows smoke on a drunk woman
    around 1660–1665

  • Jan Steen:
    Sleeping woman and smoker
    around 1660

  • Jan Steen:
    Wine is a mocker
    around 1663–1664

Tobacco has been a popular luxury food in Europe since the beginning of the 17th century. Like drinking, smoking was considered a vice that clouds the head. Paintings with crude depictions of smokers and drunks served to entertain wealthy citizens and were also intended as moral warnings. The consumption of harmful substances that served the illusion represented a departure from the path of virtue and could mark the beginning of social decline. In the case of Steen's Smoking Women , the warning is underlined by the fact that the two people portrayed are women. Steens contemporaries expected a greater reluctance towards luxury foods, especially from women.

In addition, the painting Smoking Women can also be seen as a symbol for smell. The representation of the five senses occurs in Dutch baroque painting as a series of pictures or as a single motif. The volatility of the smoke is also an indication of the popular vanitas still lifes . The rapid transience of smoke is contrasted with the finite life, in the picture smoking women made clear by the contrast between young and old women.

Provenance

Jan Steen: Smoking women , painting with frame in the cabinet of Oranienburg Castle, picture from 2018

The Dutch art historian Cornelis Hofstede de Groot has suspected that the painting Smoking Women is the work of Jan Steen, which was auctioned in Amsterdam in 1740 and in Leiden in 1761 . The picture can be traced back to Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam in 1890 . Nothing is known about the acquisition by the Hohenzollern . From 1932 the picture was part of the exhibition in the Grunewald hunting lodge . After the war ended in 1945, the painting was stolen and taken to the United Kingdom . In 1951 it was found in the Nora Bibi collection in Southport . When the Duits art dealer in London offered the painting in 1964, it could be bought back with funds from the Foundation of the German Class Lottery for the State Palaces and Gardens in Berlin. Then it could be seen again in the Grunewald hunting lodge until the beginning of the 2000s. It is currently part of the exhibition at Oranienburg Castle.

literature

  • Helmut Börsch-Supan: The paintings in the Grunewald hunting lodge . State Palaces and Gardens, Gebrüder Mann, Berlin 1964, p. 124.
  • Maria Kapp: The Dutch and Flemish paintings of the 17th century in the Grunewald hunting lodge . State Palaces and Gardens, Berlin 1989, pp. 24–25
  • Regina Hanemann (ed.): 450 years of the Grunewald hunting lodge: 1542–1992 . Book accompanying the 1992 exhibition on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the Grunewald hunting lodge and the 750th anniversary of the Zehlendorf district, Vol. 2 Helmut Börsch-Supan: From the painting collection , State Palaces and Gardens Berlin, Berlin 1992. P. 54.
  • Cornelis Hofstede de Groot: Descriptive and critical directory of the works of the most outstanding Dutch painters of the 17th century . Neff, Esslingen 1907, p. 164.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: From the collection of paintings in Regina Hanemann: 450 years of Grunewald hunting lodge: 1542 - 1992 . Vol. 2, p. 54.
  2. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: From the collection of paintings in Regina Hanemann: 450 years of Grunewald hunting lodge: 1542 - 1992 . Vol. 2, p. 54.
  3. ↑ Cornelis Hofstede de Groot: Descriptive and critical directory of the works of the most outstanding Dutch painters of the XVII. Century , p. 164.
  4. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: From the collection of paintings in Regina Hanemann: 450 years of Grunewald hunting lodge: 1542 - 1992 . Vol. 2, p. 54.
  5. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: From the collection of paintings in Regina Hanemann: 450 years of Grunewald hunting lodge: 1542 - 1992 . Vol. 2, p. 54.
  6. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: The paintings in the Grunewald hunting lodge , p. 124.
  7. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: The paintings in the Grunewald hunting lodge , p. 124.
  8. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: From the collection of paintings in Regina Hanemann: 450 years of Grunewald hunting lodge: 1542 - 1992 . Vol. 2, p. 54.
  9. ↑ Maria Kapp: The Dutch and Flemish Paintings of the 17th Century in the Grunewald Hunting Lodge , p. 24.
  10. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: From the collection of paintings in Regina Hanemann: 450 years of Grunewald hunting lodge: 1542 - 1992 . Vol. 2, p. 54.
  11. ↑ Maria Kapp: The Dutch and Flemish Paintings of the 17th Century in the Grunewald Hunting Lodge , p. 25.
  12. ↑ Cornelius Hofstede de Groot: Descriptive and critical directory of the works of the most outstanding Dutch painters of the 17th century , p. 164.
  13. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: From the collection of paintings in Regina Hanemann: 450 years of Grunewald hunting lodge: 1542 - 1992 . Vol. 2, p. 54.
  14. ↑ Helmut Börsch-Supan: From the collection of paintings in Regina Hanemann: 450 years of Grunewald hunting lodge: 1542 - 1992 . Vol. 2, p. 54.