Figures Smoking and Playing Music in an Inn
Artist/Culture
Jan Miense Molenaer
(Dutch, about 1610–1668)
Date1640s
Mediumoil on panel
Dimensionspanel: 38.3 x 49.5 cm (15 1/16 x 19 1/2 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineGift of Robert and Mary Cushman
Terms
Object number1999.384
Label TextMolenaer achieved early recognition as one of Haarlem's leading genre painters. In 1637 he married another successful artist, Judith Leyster, one of whose few known paintings hangs nearby.
After their marriage, Molenaer and Leyster moved to Amsterdam where there was a greater market for paintings. There, Leyster appears to have given up her career as a painter to raise their children and assist in the sale of her husband's work.
Characteristic of Molenaer's scenes of everyday life, this painting incorporates the theme of the five senses with Hearing represented by music making, Taste by smoking and drinking, Smell by the dog, Sight by the woman looking at the upraised glass, and Touch by the embracing couple at the left. One of the beliefs of Calvinism, Holland's dominant religion, was that the senses could be a source of sin, especially when connected with excess as suggested here.ProvenanceBought by ancestors of the present owner circa 1923/4: Looted in 1942 by the Germans for Hitler's planned museum at Linz: Identified in the Kartause Mauerback (near Vienna) in 1986 and returned by the Austrian authorities to the present owner in 1994.On View
On view
