The Music Lesson
1671
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
About the artist
Artist
Jacob Ochtervelt
Jacob Ochtervelt (1634–1682) was a Dutch Golden Age painter.
See the richer artist page1671
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
The Music Lesson is a 1671 oil by Jacob Ochtervelt, a Baroque work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
The painting shows a girl and a boy in a room, with the girl holding a violin. The girl is pointing to something, and the boy is looking at her. This painting is interesting because the girl is playing a violin, which was not a common instrument for women to play at that time. The use of light and shadow in this painting is similar to the technique of chiaroscuro.
One of Jacob Ochtervelt’s finest works, The Music Lesson was probably painted in Rotterdam, where the artist spent most of his career. The delicate light, which illuminates the girl and leaves the youth partly in shadow, is indebted to Johannes Vermeer, who worked in the nearby city of Delft. Characteristic of Ochtervelt, however, are the angled poses and the playful interchange between the figures. The girl holds a violin, an instrument more often played by men, and points authoritatively to the music score in an ironic reversal of the roles of the sexes.
Pieter van Winter, Amsterdam (died 1807) [according to Priem 1997 on the basis of a drawing from the Praetorius Album by Pieter Ernst Hendrik Praetorius in the Six Collection, Amsterdam showing the contents of the van Winter Collection]; by descent to his heirs until the division of his property in 1818, when it was assigned to the portion of his daughter Lucretia Johanna van Winter [according to Priem 1997]. Presumably Prince Anatole Demidoff, Villa San Donato, near Florence (died 1870); by descent to his nephew Prince Paul Demidoff (died 1885) and later to Paul Demidoff’s widow, Helena…
Toledo Museum of Art, Inaugural Exhibition, January 17–February 12, 1912, cat. 197. Detroit Institute of Arts, The Ninth Loan Exhibition: Dutch Genre and Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, October 16–November 10, 1929, no. 46. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, June 1–November 1933, no. 70. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, June 1–November 1, 1934, no. 102. New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Holland Indoors and Outdoors, January 10–29, 1938, no. 22. New York, Duveen Galleries,…
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Jacob Ochtervelt (1634–1682) was a Dutch Golden Age painter.
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