Beware of Luxury

Beware of Luxury is an oil-on-canvas work, measuring 105 x 145.5 cm.^[1] It is a satirical depiction of a middle-class Dutch family indulging in excess, with a moral message about the virtues of moderation. The painting is a humorous illustration of a Dutch saying: In Weelde Siet Toe, which appears on a slate in the bottom left corner. In full, the proverb translates as "Beware of luxury" or "In good times, beware the consequences."^[4]

In this painting, the lady of the house has fallen asleep, perhaps due to drunkenness, allowing the household to run wild.^[4] Her husband in the foreground is carrying on a dalliance with another young woman, who is holding a glass of red wine between his legs. He is laughing off the admonitions of a nun or beguine. A man plays the violin while a distressed Quaker man consults his Bible.^[4] One child reaches into the cabinet of glassware, while her younger brother blows on a tobacco pipe. The youngest child is playing with a string of pearls and a silver spoon.^[2]

Around the family and their guests, the home is hopelessly disorganized. Food, dishware, and playing cards are scattered over the floor; a wine barrel in the corner is leaking, as a pig has made off with the spigot.^[4] Elsewhere, a duck sits on one man's shoulder, and a monkey holds a string attached to a clock. On the table, a dog laps up the pie.^[2] Suspended over the scene, a basket of tools and weapons dangles hazardously.

Jan Steen was known for his humorous and satirical paintings of "dissolute households", which often mocked the excesses of the rising Dutch bourgeoisie. In the 17th century, trade created economic prosperity and class mobility in the Dutch Republic. Many middle-class families suddenly accrued new wealth; some purchased aristocratic titles and rose up the social ranks, while others became successful urban burghers.^[7] Household portraits, to show off a family's new luxuries and power, were commonplace. Steen himself painted several portraits of these nouveau riche, perhaps providing inspiration for his satire.^[8] He deliberately inverted the tropes of painters like Pieter de Hooch, twisting familial scenes into warnings against the effects of intemperance.^[7]

For Dutch group portraiture, class would have been immediately indicated to the viewer by dress and activity. Middle-class people wanted to be painted as moral hard-workers, while the new aristocrats would be portrayed in acts of luxury like talking or playing music.^[8] In Beware of Luxury, the modest house and plain clothing of its inhabitants indicate this is a middle-class family. Yet the adults talk and strum instruments, while children play with pearls and glassware, activities that symbolize the leisure of an aristocratic family. By including contrasting symbols of different classes, Jan Steen may be mocking burghers who gain a little wealth and abandon their moral work. His subjects, indulging in good times and small riches, ignore their impending doom.

At the same time, however, the painting also carries a moral message about the dangers of excess and the virtues of moderation. The figures are shown engaged in various forms of excess and indulgence, from drinking and eating to playing music and reading frivolous books.^[2][3] Meanwhile, the objects suspended above them, and the warning in the corner, tell the viewer to judge the contents as a cautionary tale. This framework, which seems to praise a vice but includes a hidden message of truth, is known as an ironic eulogy.^[9] Ironic eulogies were a popular rhetorical method for many writers, and painters, throughout early Modern Europe.^[10]

Steen used himself and his family as models for many of his comic portraits. His own comic persona drinks, blows bagpipes, and carouses irreverently. Although some viewers might not have recognized the artist, many painting sales at that time were conducted face-to-face, so the artist's face in these farcical scenes would have been part of the joke.^[11] Later biographers often mistook Steen's fictional self-portraits for accurate portrayals of his life, leading to a common perception of Steen as a drunken ne'er-do-well.^[12] In this painting, Steen is the grinning man in the brown jacket. The woman in the center is his first wife, Margriet van Goyen. According to one biographer, she disliked that Steen often portrayed her as a "loose woman", though she willingly modeled for many such portraits during her lifetime.^[11]

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  Jan Steen - Beware of Luxury (“In Weelde Siet Toe”)
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  Jan Steen, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie - "Die verkehrte Welt"
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  Jan Steen - Beware of Luxury (“In Weelde Siet Toe”)