21/4/23 - Acquisition - Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum - Seated nonchalantly by a fireplace, a young boy stares at the viewer in an unassuming manner, with a pipe in his left hand and a mug in his right, and seems to be inviting him to join him (ill.1). This painting by Jan Miens Molenaer, which has been on display at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem since 18 April, is probably a warning against all kinds of excess and guilty pleasures. It was donated by a private individual who bought it at Tefaf from the stand of the Koetser Gallery in Zurich.
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- 1. Jan Miense Molenaer (c. 1610-1668)
Boy with Beer Mug and Pipe, c. 1627-1628
Oil on panel - 52 x 43.2 cm
Harlem, Frans Hals Museum
Photo: Koetser Gallery - See the image in its page
A genre painter born in Haarlem in the early 17th century, Molenaer trained in the studio of Frans Hals, whose influence he suffered, at least initially, when he painted refined and colourful genre scenes in bourgeois interiors, giving an important place to the theme of music. Then, in the 1640s, he was influenced by the rustic subjects of Adriaen Van Ostade and began to paint darker compositions with brown tones and more pronounced chiaroscuro.
This pipe smoker is an early painting that shows the artist’s ambition. He carefully describes the materials - the fabrics of the garment, the pewter mug, and even the flames crackling in the fireplace -, works on the play of light and shadow, and finally studies the posture of his character, which he wants to be natural, with his foot raised on the bar of the stool and the detail of the socks that fall on the ankles, revealing his knees.
These different elements are found in his later paintings, the Two Boys and a Girl Making Music for example, which can be seen in the National Gallery in London, are very similar to this young boy. The choice of placing a main figure seated in the centre and presented at an angle is recurrent, as is the insistence of the gaze and a taste for a certain provocation. In his self-portrait in the National Gallery in Washington, the painter resumed the pose and developed the theme of his youthful painting: he depicted himself around 1635 as a lute player tuning his instrument, no doubt as a metaphor for his choice of a harmonious life, far from the excesses to which a table offering food in fine crockery, wine and tobacco invites him.
He again depicted a young pipe-smoker in a later painting now preserved in Bergamo (ill. 2) which shows the evolution of his style (see article on the masterpieces of the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo).
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- Jan Miense Molenaer (c. 1610-1668)
Young man with a pipe, c. 1632-1634
Oil on panel - 70 x 55 cm
Bergamo, Accademia Carrara
Photo : Didier Rykner - See the image in its page
The Haarlem Museum compares Molenaer’s works with those of Frans Hals and his brother Dirck Hals, and also with those of Judith Leyster, whom he married in 1636 and whose paintings are often confused with his own. These comparisons show the interplay of influences between the master and his pupils, and between painters of the same generation, while at the same time highlighting the personality of each.