Jan Havicksz. Steen portretteert zijn vrouw 1800 - 1900

This print at the Rijksmuseum depicts the painter Jan Steen portraying his wife. It’s impossible to date precisely, or even to identify its author, but we can see how it responds to, and playfully critiques, the role of the artist in 17th-century Dutch society. Here, we see the artist in his studio, but instead of idealizing his subject in paint, he’s shown including a basket of sheep heads and trotters in the portrait, much to his wife’s chagrin. The print presents Steen as motivated by the need to put food on the table. It suggests that he exaggerates his portraits, and that he does so to make his wife famous, in order to get more business. To properly understand this work, one could look at other images that make similar claims about artists, and research the economic conditions of artistic production in the Netherlands during that period. This print reminds us that art and its institutions are always subject to the forces of economic life.