Rhetoricians 1668

Jan Steen, painted Rhetoricians, a lively oil on canvas, during the Dutch Golden Age, a period marked by unprecedented economic prosperity and cultural flourishing in the Netherlands. In this period, civic life revolved around associations such as the Rhetoricians' Societies depicted here, literary and dramatic clubs drawn from all social classes. But the scene hints at something less elevated than poetry, and more bawdy, a drunken celebration. Are we looking at an embrace between a prostitute and her client? What does it mean to put the life of the tavern on the scale of high art? Steen often infused his paintings with moral undertones, reflecting the social and ethical values of the time, here turning his critical eye to the middle class. How are we to read a scene that depicts citizens at their leisure, a leisure that seems to border on dissolution? The work offers a window into the complexities of Dutch society, a time where prosperity enabled new forms of social gathering, with both creative and potentially disruptive implications.