Attributed To Jan Miense Molenaer (1609/10 - 1668), Children Playing Music

Attributed to Jan Miense Molenaer
Dutch painter
Haarlem 1609/10 – 1668 Haarlem
Interior scene with children making music
Oil on panel : 54,1 X 65,3 cm
Unsigned
Frame : 73,5 X 85,8 cm

Provenance : sold at Sotheby’s Amsterdam, 13/05/03 for 10.980 € as  “studio of Jan Miense Molenaer”. That attribution had been endorsed by Dennis P. Weller, who dated the painting circa 1628. Our painting is recorded at the RKD, The Hague as “attributed to Jan Miense Molenaer” under the number 0000135318. The RKD states that the painting must be slightly younger, dating from the 1630s.

Jan Miense Molenaer was an excellent painter of the ordinary behaviour of the lower social classes. His scenes must have been a source of laughter for his clients in Haarlem and in Amsterdam. Molenaer had been a pupil of Frans Hals in Haarlem. He married one of the most famous female painters of the seventeenth century, Judith Leyster. But while his art is funny and vivid, he himself had an absolutely pugnacious character.

All my paintings stand fully documented on my website:
https://www.jeanmoust.com/categories/portraits-genre-and-exterior-scenes/molenaer-attributed-to-jan-miense/item-4144474