Getting rowdy a the Currier
Golden Age realism exhibit displays down-to-earth appeal of painter's raucous love of life

By Bob Craven
HippoPress.com

For the next couple of months, you can find the vice of your choice at the Currier Museum of Art. "Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age," on view through June 16, presents some 40 works by an artist whose realism reveals a rowdy love of life.

Molenaer (c. 1610-1668) was married to the painter Judith Leyster (1609-1660), and as the museum points out, his work, now given the spotlight, previously took a back seat to that of his wife. It is easy to see why. Leyster's canvas-filling figures are more freely drawn and better oriented in space. Their faces suggest a depth of personality that outdoes those of her many less-gifted colleagues, including her husband.

Yet there's plenty to enjoy. This was, after all, a "Golden Age" of art, and Molenaer embodies some of its finest qualities. Molenaer specialized in portraits and also in comic scenes describing peasant life. These often overlapped with his other favorite subject, allegories (symbolic narratives) on moral themes. Historically, he is considered a link in both subject and manner between Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569) and Jan Steen (1626-1679). But for the visitor to this exhibition, Molenaer is an illustrator, and his work, mostly produced for a middle-class market, is downright fun to see.

Take, for example, his "Allegory of the Five Senses" hanging in the first of the show's four galleries. Molenaer gives this subject a down-to-earth appeal. Each miniature painting illustrates one of the senses. In "Hearing" three carousers accompany their drinking with song; in "Touch" a randy reveler gropes under his companion's skirt while she whacks him on the head with a shoe; in "Smell," mom does diaper duty while dad holds his nose and an onlooker laughs. The traditional moral about mortifying the senses is mocked, for the images themselves are sensory delights, 17th-century sight gags. On an adjoining wall, in another instance of broad humor, a burly, ham-handed, bulbous-nosed, stubbly-cheeked dentist extracts a tooth from a terrified patient.

In the second gallery we find narratives of a more subtle nature. Two of them, the "Allegory of Vanity" and "Allegory of Fidelity," illustrate moral lessons in symbolic terms. In the former a woman helps a young lady arrange her long, flowing hair. The scene is filled with traditional emblems of vanitas, which meant something more than mere narcissism. It suggested the shallowness of earthly life. The lady looks in a mirror. At her feet is a skull, a reminder of death. A lute hangs on the wall (music often symbolized life's intangibility and brevity). A boy blows bubbles. The visual message is clear: Forsake earthly appearances for heavenly truth. But not all of Molenaer's stories are so easily interpreted.

The "Allegory of Fidelity" portrays a wealthy young couple at a garden party. In addition to traditional symbols of marital bliss-harmonious music and a loyal dog ("Fido")-there are hints of the alternatives. In the background a fight erupts among local bumpkins. In the foreground a monkey clutches a kitten. What can this mean? In the art and literature of the period monkeys symbolized various things, including lechery. Whatever the monkey's allegorical role, there's something weird in his riveting, almost-human stare. The image is hard to forget.

Part of the third gallery is devoted to scenes featuring music and the instruments that create it-again frequently in the service of allegory. But it is clear from the later works in the fourth gallery that Molenaer's stock in trade was comic caricatures of the lower classes, especially the peasantry. Singing and dancing, smoking and drinking, leering and pawing, they carouse their way through taverns, dining halls and village squares. Ostensibly there to warn Molenaer's bourgeois audience to avoid such excesses, they reinforce a sense of class superiority and offer a vicarious taste of forbidden pleasures.

Another cautionary tale is told in "Card Players," a painting owned by the Currier itself. A rakish gallant, drink in hand, looks us in the eye and smiles, perhaps sizing us up as we enter the room. Across the table a card player, an old man, is offered advice from the kibitzer who stands behind him. What he doesn't know is that she's holding a mirror in which we-and his opponent-can clearly see the cards in his hand. Then, in the shadows, we notice a fellow stealing his dinner. The only person in the room who is not a thief or a cheat, the old fool will go home poorer and, we hope, wiser for the fleecing.

Gathered from more than 30 collections around the world, this show originated at the North Carolina Museum of Art, visiting the Indianapolis Museum of Art prior to its final stop at the Currier. It's a rolling party well worth crashing.

"Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age," continues at the Currier Museum of Art through June 16. The Currier is located at 201 Myrtle Way. Call 669-6144 for hours and admission costs.

Robert R. Craven is the chair of the Department of Arts and Humanities at Southern New Hampshire University. The author or editor-in-chief of five books, including a two-volume encyclopedia of world symphony orchestras, he is also the New Hampshire art review editor for the magazine Art New England and the Director of SNHU's McIninch Art Gallery.

Bob Craven can be reached at hippo@hippopress.com