FOLLOWER OF JAN STEEN | AN INTERIOR WITH THREE CHILDREN PLAYING WITH A CAT

Mrs. Paul Foley, Long Beach, California, March 19, 1940;

Anne R. and Amy Putnam;

By whom gifted to the San Diego Museum of Art, March 1940 (inv. no. 1940.14). 

C. Rothschild and J. Shapley, Parnassus, New York 1940, pp. 46-47, reproduced fig. 46;

J.G. Andrews, Catalogue of European Paintings, 1300-1870, San Diego 1947, p. 128;

The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego Catalogue, San Diego 1960, p. 31, reproduced fig. 31;

K. Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen, Rotterdam 1980, p. 113, under cat. no. 185, reproduced fig. 185a (as a copy, and incorrectly listed as on canvas);

P.C. Sutton, Dutch Art in America, Washington, D.C. 1986, p. 347 (as follower of Jan Steen). 

J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer, Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, Zwolle 1993, p. 266, 268, reproduced fig. 25b (as Jan Steen).

This charming interior scene of three children playing with a cat that they have dressed in a bonnet follows an original painted by Jan Steen in about 1666. There are at least two other versions known of this composition, and the one formerly in the Van Horne collection that last appeared at auction at Sotheby's London on 3 December 1997 (lot 77) has long been considered the prime.¹  

The theme of children playing with a cat proved popular among Dutch Golden Age artists. Steen explored the subject on several occasions. The proposed pendant to the present composition is Steen's Children teaching a cat to read in the Kunstsammlung, Basel (inv. 1858.39),² and two other similarly themed examples are today in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam—one illustrates Children teaching a cat to dance,³ and the other, titled the Parrot Cage, includes a detail of a young boy feeding a cat porridge in the lower left corner.⁴

1. The version offered at Sotheby's was oil on panel and measured 46.5 by 39.4 cm. Braun (1980) lists another copy on panel (41 by 36 cm) that last appeared on the art market in Berlin in the 1930s.  

2. Braun 1980, cat. no. 184. 

3.  https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-718 

4. https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-386