The Way You Hear It - Jan Steen
Archival giclée
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Description
A classic Dutch Golden Age genre painting by Jan Steen, depicting a multi-generational household scene that illustrates the proverb: As the old sing, so the young pipe.
Jan Steen, a master of the Dutch Golden Age, produced this work around 1665. The title refers to a popular Dutch proverb: 'As the old sing, so the young pipe.' This painting depicts a multi-generational household engaged in a scene of domestic revelry. Steen frequently used such scenes to comment on moral behaviour, family dynamics, and the transmission of habits from parents to children.
The composition is crowded with figures, each contributing to the chaotic atmosphere. An elderly man plays the bagpipes while a child mimics him with a smaller instrument, illustrating the proverb directly. A woman pours wine for a young child, a detail that would have been interpreted by contemporary viewers as a critique of poor parenting and lack of discipline. The presence of a parrot, a dog, and various household objects adds to the narrative density of the interior space.
Steen employs a warm, earthy palette, typical of his interior scenes. The lighting is focused on the central group, drawing the eye to the interaction between the adults and the children. His brushwork is precise, capturing the textures of the velvet garments, the reflective surface of the glassware, and the rougher surfaces of the wooden furniture. The scene is not merely a depiction of a family gathering, but a calculated observation of human folly. Steen was known for his ability to balance technical skill with a sense of humour, often placing himself or his family members within these staged domestic dramas. This work remains a primary example of his ability to weave complex social commentary into the fabric of everyday life, using the home as a stage for wider societal critique.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
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- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
The Way You Hear It - Jan Steen
Artist Biography
Jan Steen
He was born in Leiden around 1626 into a well-to-do Catholic family of brewers who ran the tavern The Red Halbert. In 1648 he and Gabriel Metsu co-founded the painters' Guild of Saint Luke in Leiden. He studied under Jan van Goyen, the landscape painter, and married Van Goyen's daughter Margriet in 1649. His father leased him a brewery in Delft from 1654 to 1657; when the art market collapsed in the Year of Disaster (1672), he opened a tavern in Leiden.
His painting drew heavily on the Rhetoricians, the amateur theatrical guilds whose public performances combined moralising with bawdy comedy. Steen treated his own family as a cast: he used relatives as models and painted himself repeatedly with no trace of vanity, often as the fool or the drunk. The Feast of Saint Nicholas and Girl Eating Oysters are among his most recognisable images, each balancing precise observation of Dutch domestic life with a theatrical sense of timing.
Despite enormous productivity he struggled financially throughout his career. His second wife was left with heavy debts and a large family after his death in Leiden in 1679, at fifty-two. Collectors valued him from early on, but the prices came after his lifetime.
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