The Skittle Players

The Skittle Players, in Trinity Hall Cambridge, belongs to Jan Steen's outdoor public entertainment scenes in which the social life of Dutch streets, courtyards, and inn yards was observed with affectionate comedy. Skittles — an early form of the bowling game — was a popular Dutch pastime associated with inns, public squares, and the sociable leisure of artisan and merchant classes. Steen treated such outdoor games as he treated indoor drinking scenes: as opportunities to observe a cross-section of Dutch society engaged in communal pleasure, with all the associated risks of gambling, drinking, and distraction. The Trinity Hall collection is one of several British institutional holdings of Dutch genre paintings assembled through collegiate and private collecting over centuries. The undated work is consistent with Steen's mature outdoor genre subjects.

Outdoor game scenes required Steen to manage figures in active poses within a daylit exterior setting. The game's spatial layout — the lane, the skittles at one end, the players and watchers at the other — provided a natural compositional organisation. Natural daylight allowed a more varied, cooler palette than his interior scenes.