Der Hühnerbauer

Der Hühnerbauer (The Poultry Farmer or Chicken Coop) of 1651, held in the Führermuseum's wartime collection and subsequently recovered, depicts a rural or farmyard scene consistent with the Dutch genre tradition of humble, everyday agricultural subjects. Steen's engagement with the farmyard — chickens, geese, the domestic animals of the peasant household — reflects the Dutch tradition of animal genre painting in which the ordinary creatures of daily life were treated with the same artistic seriousness as grander subjects. The early date of 1651 places this among Steen's earliest mature works, when he was still developing the mixture of observation, comedy, and moral commentary that would define his mature style. The humble farmyard setting and its inhabitants are treated with the same formal care that more celebrated Dutch painters brought to their interiors.

The farmyard setting provided Steen with a range of textural challenges — the varied plumage of different poultry, the roughness of wooden farm structures, the scatter of grain on the ground. His early technique shows confident handling of these varied surfaces with differentiated brushwork for different materials.