Jan Steen (1626–1679) ✽ Dutch painter

Thank you everyone for watching and for comments! ✽ All the best. Jan Steen, in full Jan Havickszoon Steen, (born c. 1626, Leiden, Netherlands—died February 3, 1679, Leiden), Dutch painter of genre, or everyday, scenes, often lively interiors bearing a moralizing theme. Steen is unique among leading 17th-century Dutch painters for his humour; he has often been compared to the French comic playwright Molière, his contemporary, and indeed both men treated life as a vast comedy of manners. Some of the artist’s biblical and classical paintings such as Antony and Cleopatra (1667) may have been inspired by the contemporary stage. His portraits of rhetoricians, such as Rhetoricians at a Window (1658–65), attest to his interest in these groups of amateur actors. Steen was enrolled at the University of Leiden in 1646 and in 1648 was one of the founding members, along with Gabriel Metsu and others, of the Leiden painters’ Guild