Festive Scene

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Object Details

Artist: Jan Miense Molenaer, Dutch, born Haarlem, Netherlands ca. 1610-died Haarlem, Netherlands 1668

Luce Center Label: Festive Scene conjures chimney smoke, bleating pipes, and boozy sweat. Revelers dance and drink in a dark tavern, where a spotted dog snoozes in spite of the racket. This is one of many humorous tavern interiors painted by the Dutch master Jan Miense Molenaer. (Westermann, “Jan Miense Molenaer in the Comic Mode,” in Weller, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, 2002). The work was part of the collection of Ralph Cross Johnson, a Harvard-educated lawyer who was described at the time of his death as “One of the greatest patrons of art in the country” (The Washington Post, July 10, 1923). Johnson gave the Smithsonian American Art Museum (then the National Collection of Fine Arts) forty-one old-master paintings, which filled an entire gallery of the Museum. Seventeenth-century Dutch paintings were all the rage among wealthy Americans like Johnson, who amassed European art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, hoping that their collections would one day form the core of America’s national museums.

Credit Line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Mabel Johnson Langhorne

ca. 1650

See more items in: Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection
Department: Painting and Sculpture
On View: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center, 3rd Floor, 5B; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center, 3rd Floor

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Topic: Figure group; Recreation\dancing; Performing arts\music\violin; Ceremony\festival; Dutch

GUID (Link to Original Record): http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/vk724cec7c4-705b-4046-a87b-629291ccf30f