Provenance
Possibly (sale, Willem Fabricius, Haarlem, 19 August 1749, no. 26).[1]Richard M. Foster, Clewer Manor, near Windsor, Berkshire;[2] his son, Edmund Benson Foster [1830-1862], Clewer Manor; (Richard Foster's estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 3 June 1876, no. 1, as _The Guitar Lesson_); Samuel Addington [1806-1886], London; (his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 22 May 1886, no. 107, as _The Guitar Lesson_); Davis.[3] Sir Julian Goldsmid [1838-1896]; (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 13 June 1896, no. 82, as _The Guitar Lesson_). (Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris). Baron Michael Ephrussi [1845-1914], Paris; purchased 1900 by William A. Clark [1839-1925], New York; bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] Mariët Westermann, _The Amusements of Jan Steen: Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century_, Zwolle, 1997: 98-99, 127 n. 47.
[2] According to William Roberts (_Memorials of Christie's: A Record of Art Sales from 1766 to 1896, Volume 1_, London, 1897: 253), the Clewer Manor collection was "formed by three generations of the Foster family."
[3] Samuel Addington to Davis is recorded by C. Hofstede de Groot, _Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII Jahrhunderts_, Esslingen am Neckar, 1907: 96, no. 415. A copy of the sale catalogue in the NGA Library is annotated with the name "Davis" (copy in NGA curatorial files).
Accession Number
2014.136.45
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 62.1 × 52 cm (24 7/16 × 20 1/2 in.) | framed: 86.04 × 75.57 × 10.16 cm (33 7/8 × 29 3/4 × 4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection)
Tags
Painting Baroque (1600–1750) Oil Painting Canvas Dutch
Background & Context
Background Story
Jan Steen (c. 1626-1679) was the foremost genre painter of the Dutch Golden Age, known for his chaotic, humor-filled scenes of domestic disorder that gave rise to the Dutch expression 'a Jan Steen household' meaning a chaotic, messy home. Ascagnes and Lucelle (The Music Lesson) from 1667 is a relatively orderly work in Steen's oeuvre, depicting a music lesson that doubles as a romantic encounter—the musicmaster and his female student exchanging glances over their instruments while other figures look on with knowing smiles. The title refers to a play by the Dutch writer Dirck Camphuysen, connecting the painting to the literary and theatrical culture that informed all of Steen's work.
Cultural Impact
Jan Steen's music lesson paintings participate in a long tradition in Dutch art in which music making doubles as a metaphor for romantic—or sexual—harmony. The knowing looks of the onlookers, the suggestive positioning of the instruments, and the literary reference in the title all encode the painting with moral and erotic meanings that would have been immediately legible to Steen's original audience but that require interpretation for modern viewers.
Why It Matters
Ascagnes and Lucelle is Jan Steen's music lesson at its most knowing: a romantic encounter disguised as instruction, with onlookers who understand exactly what the music lesson is really about. The literary title connects the painting to Dutch theatrical culture, and the knowing smiles of the figures invite the viewer to share the joke that music and love are the same art.
