The Happy Family

Jan Steen's Happy Family from 1668, in the Rijksmuseum, ironically depicts anything but a happy family—the household is in complete disarray, with the parents leading their children in dissolution and excess. The title's irony is typical of Steen's moralizing approach, in which apparently festive scenes carry pointed warnings about the consequences of parental irresponsibility. The painting's rich detail provides a comprehensive inventory of Dutch domestic life and material culture in the seventeenth century.

The composition fills the interior with animated figures and symbolic objects, each contributing to the moralizing program. Steen's technique balances the rapid, energetic rendering of figures with more careful attention to the still-life elements and domestic furnishings.