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The Music Lesson
Jacob Ochtervelt·1671
Historical Context
Jacob Ochtervelt's The Music Lesson, painted in 1671, depicts an elegant interior scene of musical instruction — a subject rich with amorous implications in Dutch genre painting. Ochtervelt, active in Rotterdam and later Amsterdam, specialized in refined genre scenes of upper-class domestic life that followed the model established by ter Borch and Metsu. His interiors feature elegant women in silk and satin, accompanied by male visitors in scenes of courtship disguised as cultural refinement.
Technical Analysis
Ochtervelt's oil-on-canvas technique renders the luxurious interior with careful attention to the play of light on silk fabrics and polished surfaces. His palette is warm and luminous, with particularly accomplished handling of the white satin that distinguishes his female figures.
Provenance
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 Troubetskoi, Pratolino, near Florence; purchased by Martin A. Ryerson (died 1932), Chicago, through Durand-Ruel, Paris in 1890 [purchase through Durand-Ruel established by Day Book in Registrar’s Office, Art Institute (entry for October 31, 1890); Bode 1895 indicated that the painting came from Demidoff]; intermittently on loan to the Art Institute from 1911 [according to registrar’s records]; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1933.
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