Nocturnal Serenade

During the 1670s, when Steen returned to Leiden and was apparently active as an innkeeper, he continued to be prolific. Large subject pictures and genre scenes, as well as tiny, carefully finished paintings, were made during his last years. There is an increasing elegance and an occasional use of glossy paint during this phase, but his sharp wit and good humour are not affected at all. In some of these late works there is already a premonition of Watteau's elegant idylls. The Nocturnal Serenade shows a whole group dressed and masked as Italian comedians; the theme is one Rococo painters were to use frequently. The slightly elongated proportions of Steen's masquers are already closer to those used by eighteenth-century artists than to the ones employed by his own contemporaries.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes): Franz Schubert: Ständchen (Serenade), Franz Liszt's transcription