The Story
A Woman at her Toilet is an oil-on-panel painting by Jan Steen painted in 1663. Is now a part of the Royal Collection, having been acquired by King George IV in 1821. The painting is housed in Buckingham Palace. The composition depicts a partly undressed woman, seated on her bed and putting on a stocking. She faces the viewer with a flirtatious gaze. An arched doorway intervenes between the woman and the viewer, bisecting the line of sight into two symbolically charged realms.
Thus split, the two resulting spaces are populated with symbols familiar to Steen's contemporaries. The arch in the foreground "represents moral probity emphasised by the symbolism of the sunflower (constancy), the grapevines (domestic virtue) and the weeping cherub (chastised profane love)". In contrast, the room beyond the arch is the domain of vanity and profane love, symbolized by a skull, an extinguished candle, and a lute with a broken string. The painting is rich with sexual innuendo, some of it based on word play.
Executed in Inv.; from Dr. A. Pauli, Amsterdam, fl.25,000, to Johanna Geertruida de Bruyn- van der Leeuw(1887-1960),Spiez, 1924;{Note RMA.} donated to the museum by Isaäc de Bruijn and his wife, Johanna Geertruida de Bruyn- van der Leeuw (1877-1960), Spiez and Muri, near Bern, 1949, but kept in usufruct;{Note RMA.} transferred to the museum, 1961, measuring height: 37; width: 27.5, the surface rewards close looking. Jan Steen builds the composition through layered glazes and a tightly controlled palette, letting cool shadows recede so that the warm, lit passages step forward. The brushwork shifts from the precise to the almost dissolved — a hallmark of mature Baroque practice.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
