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Ascagnes and Lucelle (The Music Lesson)
Jan Steen·1667
Historical Context
Jan Steen's Ascagnes and Lucelle (The Music Lesson) from 1667 depicts a scene from a popular Dutch play — the love story of Ascagnes and Lucelle from an adaptation of a French romance — within the format of an intimate domestic scene. Steen was unusual among Dutch painters in combining theatrical subjects with his characteristic domestic genre, the painted scene suggesting a theatrical scenario while remaining grounded in the observed world of Dutch interiors. The music lesson was one of the period's most consistently used subjects for depicting courtship — the shared activity of making music providing the occasion for the social interaction that was courtship's necessary prelude.
Technical Analysis
Steen's oil on canvas features his characteristic theatrical staging with warm, focused lighting, expressive figure interaction, and carefully placed still-life elements that comment on the romantic narrative.
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).
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