Singers Outside an Inn

Singers Outside an Inn, at the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, belongs to Jan Steen's extensive treatment of outdoor public entertainment and the social life of Dutch streets and inn fronts. Street music and singing occupied a significant place in seventeenth-century Dutch popular culture, ranging from professional itinerant musicians to neighbourhood entertainments, and Steen painted such subjects with his characteristic mixture of affectionate observation and gentle satire. The threshold between the inn interior and the street exterior was a productive location for him: it allowed the mixing of social types — the inn's clientele, passersby, neighbours — who would not have been assembled in a private domestic interior. Outdoor scenes also gave him access to different lighting conditions, with natural daylight replacing the warm interior lamps of his indoor subjects.

Outdoor daylight scenes required Steen to shift from the warm amber tones of his interior work to a cooler, more varied natural light palette. The inn's facade provided architectural structure and depth, with figures placed in a shallow foreground space. The singers themselves occupied the compositional centre, their open mouths and raised posture signalling musical activity.