The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (459 page)
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Authors: Ian Chilvers
Steen , Jan
(1625/6–79).
Dutch painter. He is best known for his humorous
genre
scenes, warm-hearted and animated works in which he treats life as a vast comedy of manners. In Holland he ranks next to
Rembrandt
,
Vermeer
, and
Hals
in popularity and a ‘Jan Steen household’ has become an epithet for an untidy house. But Steen, one of the most prolific Dutch artists, has many other facets. He painted portraits, historical, mythological, and religious subjects (he was a Catholic), and the animals, birds, and still lifes in his pictures rival those by any of his specialist contemporaries. As a painter of children he was unsurpassed. Steen was born in Leiden and is said to have studied with Adriaen van
Ostade
in Haarlem and Jan van
Goyen
(who became his father-in-law) in The Hague. He worked in various towns—Leiden, The Hague, Delft, Warmond, and Haarlem—and in 1672 he opened a tavern in Leiden. His father had been a brewer, and in the popular imagination Steen was a drunken profligate, but there is nothing in the known facts of his life to justify this reputation. Many of his pictures represent taverns and festive gatherings, but they often feature moralizing allusions, and he also painted scenes of impeccable genteelness. Apart from his versatility, richness of characterization, and inventiveness in composition, Steen is remarkable also for his skill as a colourist, his handling of salmon-red, rose, pale yellow, and blue-green being highly distinctive. He had no recorded pupils, but his work was widely imitated.
Dutch painter. He is best known for his humorous
genre
scenes, warm-hearted and animated works in which he treats life as a vast comedy of manners. In Holland he ranks next to
Rembrandt
,
Vermeer
, and
Hals
in popularity and a ‘Jan Steen household’ has become an epithet for an untidy house. But Steen, one of the most prolific Dutch artists, has many other facets. He painted portraits, historical, mythological, and religious subjects (he was a Catholic), and the animals, birds, and still lifes in his pictures rival those by any of his specialist contemporaries. As a painter of children he was unsurpassed. Steen was born in Leiden and is said to have studied with Adriaen van
Ostade
in Haarlem and Jan van
Goyen
(who became his father-in-law) in The Hague. He worked in various towns—Leiden, The Hague, Delft, Warmond, and Haarlem—and in 1672 he opened a tavern in Leiden. His father had been a brewer, and in the popular imagination Steen was a drunken profligate, but there is nothing in the known facts of his life to justify this reputation. Many of his pictures represent taverns and festive gatherings, but they often feature moralizing allusions, and he also painted scenes of impeccable genteelness. Apart from his versatility, richness of characterization, and inventiveness in composition, Steen is remarkable also for his skill as a colourist, his handling of salmon-red, rose, pale yellow, and blue-green being highly distinctive. He had no recorded pupils, but his work was widely imitated.
Steenwyck , Hendrick van the Elder
(d. 1603?) and
Hendrick van the Younger
(d. 1603?) and
Hendrick van the Younger
(d. 1649).
Flemish painters, father and son, specialists in architectural views. Little is known of the career of either man, but the father, who was probably a pupil of Vredeman de
Vries
, is credited with developing the church interior as a special branch of painting. Both father and son painted small pictures of real and imaginary
Gothic
churches, sometimes as eerie nocturnal scenes. There are several examples of the work of Hendrick the Younger in the National Gallery, London; in two of them the figures are credited to Jan
Brueghel
the Elder.
Flemish painters, father and son, specialists in architectural views. Little is known of the career of either man, but the father, who was probably a pupil of Vredeman de
Vries
, is credited with developing the church interior as a special branch of painting. Both father and son painted small pictures of real and imaginary
Gothic
churches, sometimes as eerie nocturnal scenes. There are several examples of the work of Hendrick the Younger in the National Gallery, London; in two of them the figures are credited to Jan
Brueghel
the Elder.
Steer , Philip Wilson
(1860–1942).
English painter, son of a portrait painter
Philip Steer
(1810–71). With
Sickert
(his friend and exact contemporary), Steer was the leader in his generation of those progressive British artists who looked to France for inspiration. He trained in Paris 1882–4 (revisiting France four times between 1887 and 1891), and was a founder member of the
New English Art Club
in 1886. In 1892 the Anglo-Irish novelist George Moore wrote ‘it is admitted that Mr Steer takes a foremost place in what is known as the modern movement’ and around this time Steer was indeed at his peak, producing the beach scenes and seascapes that are regarded not only as his finest works but also as the best
Impressionist
pictures painted by an Englishman. They are remarkable for their great freshness and their subtle handling of light, and unlike Sickert's paintings they are devoid of any social or literary content. After about 1895 his work became more conventional and more closely linked to the English tradition of
Gainsborough
(especially in his portraits),
Turner
, and
Constable
. In the 1920s he turned increasingly to watercolour. He taught at the
Slade
School from 1893 to 1930 and in 1931 was awarded the Order of Merit. His sight began to fail in 1935 and he had stopped painting by 1940.
English painter, son of a portrait painter
Philip Steer
(1810–71). With
Sickert
(his friend and exact contemporary), Steer was the leader in his generation of those progressive British artists who looked to France for inspiration. He trained in Paris 1882–4 (revisiting France four times between 1887 and 1891), and was a founder member of the
New English Art Club
in 1886. In 1892 the Anglo-Irish novelist George Moore wrote ‘it is admitted that Mr Steer takes a foremost place in what is known as the modern movement’ and around this time Steer was indeed at his peak, producing the beach scenes and seascapes that are regarded not only as his finest works but also as the best
Impressionist
pictures painted by an Englishman. They are remarkable for their great freshness and their subtle handling of light, and unlike Sickert's paintings they are devoid of any social or literary content. After about 1895 his work became more conventional and more closely linked to the English tradition of
Gainsborough
(especially in his portraits),
Turner
, and
Constable
. In the 1920s he turned increasingly to watercolour. He taught at the
Slade
School from 1893 to 1930 and in 1931 was awarded the Order of Merit. His sight began to fail in 1935 and he had stopped painting by 1940.
Stein , Gertrude
(1874–1946).
American writer, collector, hostess, eccentric, and self-styled genius. She settled in Paris in 1903 and her home at 27 rue de Fleurus became famous as a literary and artistic salon; many distinguished American visitors to Paris found it their introduction to modern French painting. With her brother, the art critic
Leo Stein
(1872–1947), who lived with her from 1903 to 1912, she was one of the first collectors of the work of
Braque
,
Matisse
, and
Picasso
(who painted a well-known portrait of Gertrude, 1905–6, Metropolitan Museum, New York); another brother,
Michael
, and his wife Sarah , were also collectors. Gertrude's writings, which she claimed to be a literary counterpart to
Cubism
, are largely unintelligible, concerned with the rhythm and sound of words rather than their meaning. The best-known and most approachable of her many books is
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
(1933), which in fact is her own autobiography, composed as though by Miss Toklas (1877–1967), her secretary and companion from 1907. Alfred H.
Barr
writes that Leo Stein was ‘the critic who first felt that Matisse
and
Picasso were the two important artists of his time’, but Stein later turned his back on their work, describing Cubism as ‘godalmighty rubbish’. Clive
Bell
maintained that ‘Neither Gertrude or Leo had a genuine feeling for visual art … Pictures were pegs on which to hang hypotheses.’
American writer, collector, hostess, eccentric, and self-styled genius. She settled in Paris in 1903 and her home at 27 rue de Fleurus became famous as a literary and artistic salon; many distinguished American visitors to Paris found it their introduction to modern French painting. With her brother, the art critic
Leo Stein
(1872–1947), who lived with her from 1903 to 1912, she was one of the first collectors of the work of
Braque
,
Matisse
, and
Picasso
(who painted a well-known portrait of Gertrude, 1905–6, Metropolitan Museum, New York); another brother,
Michael
, and his wife Sarah , were also collectors. Gertrude's writings, which she claimed to be a literary counterpart to
Cubism
, are largely unintelligible, concerned with the rhythm and sound of words rather than their meaning. The best-known and most approachable of her many books is
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
(1933), which in fact is her own autobiography, composed as though by Miss Toklas (1877–1967), her secretary and companion from 1907. Alfred H.
Barr
writes that Leo Stein was ‘the critic who first felt that Matisse
and
Picasso were the two important artists of his time’, but Stein later turned his back on their work, describing Cubism as ‘godalmighty rubbish’. Clive
Bell
maintained that ‘Neither Gertrude or Leo had a genuine feeling for visual art … Pictures were pegs on which to hang hypotheses.’
Stella , Frank
(1936– ).
American painter, a leading figure of
Post-Painterly Abstraction
. In his early work he was influenced by
Abstract Expressionism
, but after settling in New York in 1958 he was impressed by the flag and target paintings of Jasper
Johns
and the direction of his art changed completely. He began to emphasize the idea that a painting is a physical object rather than a metaphor for something else, saying that he wanted to ‘eliminate illusionistic space’ and that a picture was ‘a flat surface with paint on it—nothing more’. These aims were first given expression in a series of black ‘pinstripe’ paintings in which regular black stripes were separated by very thin lines. They made a big impact when four of them were shown at the Museum of Modern Art's ‘16 Americans’ exhibition in 1959, inspiring a mixture of praise and revulsion. To identify the patterning more completely with the shape of the picture as a whole he began—from the beginning of the 1960s—to use notched and
shaped canvases
, often painting in flat bands of bright colour. In the 1970s he began to experiment with paintings that included cut-out shapes in relief and he abandoned his impersonal handling for a spontaneous, almost graffiti-like manner. He has been an influential figure, not only in painting but also on the development of
Minimal
sculpture (his friends have included
Andre
and
Judd
).
American painter, a leading figure of
Post-Painterly Abstraction
. In his early work he was influenced by
Abstract Expressionism
, but after settling in New York in 1958 he was impressed by the flag and target paintings of Jasper
Johns
and the direction of his art changed completely. He began to emphasize the idea that a painting is a physical object rather than a metaphor for something else, saying that he wanted to ‘eliminate illusionistic space’ and that a picture was ‘a flat surface with paint on it—nothing more’. These aims were first given expression in a series of black ‘pinstripe’ paintings in which regular black stripes were separated by very thin lines. They made a big impact when four of them were shown at the Museum of Modern Art's ‘16 Americans’ exhibition in 1959, inspiring a mixture of praise and revulsion. To identify the patterning more completely with the shape of the picture as a whole he began—from the beginning of the 1960s—to use notched and
shaped canvases
, often painting in flat bands of bright colour. In the 1970s he began to experiment with paintings that included cut-out shapes in relief and he abandoned his impersonal handling for a spontaneous, almost graffiti-like manner. He has been an influential figure, not only in painting but also on the development of
Minimal
sculpture (his friends have included
Andre
and
Judd
).
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