Jan Steen is one of the most popular and multitalented artists of 17th-century Dutch painting. His paintings hang in some of the world’s great museums. We may all know his fun pictures of homes in chaos, fake doctors, sick girls and inns full of drunken adults and children running wild. His chaotic scenes are so typical of his work that a ‘Jan Steen household’ is a common saying in Dutch. Besides painting many household scenes, Steen also made history paintings and portraits. He used his knowledge of the Bible, classical mythology, history, literature and the theatre in his work.
The ‘doctor’s visit’ or ‘sick girl’ was one of Steen’s favourite subjects. He would always show the doctors as ridiculous characters, dressed in a completely old-fashioned style. Steen also often made fun of their stupid victims who were fooled by these ‘physicians’.
In Steen’s early paintings it is mainly poor farmers who are tricked by ‘quacks’, or fake doctors, and tooth-pullers. The ‘doctors’ in his later work usually have rich patients.
Steen often included himself in these amusing pictures. He painted himself as a fool who willingly allowed himself to be tricked, or as a laughing figure making fun of the whole scene. Steen also used his friends and family as models, including his wife Grietje. Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719), who wrote Steen’s biography, therefore thought that Steen’s crazy paintings were of pictures his own home life. In his book he presented Steen as a joker and a drunk, and many biographers who wrote books after him carried on this image.