It is not known how Jan II was related to the famous Haarlem painter Jan Miense Molenaer. There is actually not much information known about Jan II, who worked as a painter in Haarlem during the last quarter of the 17th century.

 

 

Dutch painter

Haarlem circa 1654/58 – circa 1700 Haarlem

 

Genre scene painter.

 

Molenaer’s case is one of the most problematic of 17th century genre scene painting.

 

He became a Master of the Painter’s Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem in 1684. Both his identity and his work have frequently been confused with Jan Miense Molenaer (Haarlem 1609/10 – 1668 Haarlem) and with a certain Jan Jacobsz. Molenaer (date of birth unknown. He became a member of the Painter’s Guild of Haarlem in 1643 and he died in 1685) but his relation to both artists is unknown.

 

Jan Miense Molenaer was an excellent painter of the ordinary behaviour of the lower social classes. for his clients in Haarlem and in Amsterdam. Molenaer had been a pupil of Frans Hals in Haarlem. He married one of the most famous female painters of the seventeenth century, Judith Leyster. But while his art is funny and vivid, he himself had an absolutely pugnacious character. 

 

Our Jan’s choice of subjects, tavern scenes, reminds of Jan Miense Molenaer, but his style does not. Still it is rather problematic that Jan Miense Molenaer sometimes signed his paintings as “Jan Molenaer”.

Our painter’s style seems more related to Egbert van Heemskerck II (Haarlem 1634/35 – 1704 London).

 

Jan Miense Molenaer specialised in genre scenes, but his oeuvre also extends into portraiture, history painting and scenes of contemporary theatre. He was a pupil of Frans Hals, possibly also of his younger brother Dirk Hals. He was active in Haarlem and in nearby Heemstede (1629-1636, 1648-1655, 1657-1668) and in Amsterdam (1637-1648, 1655-1656).

 

Egbert van Heemskerck II  was the son and pupil of Egbert I (Haarlem 1610 -1680 London). Egbert II is documented in Haarlem until 1667, circa 1670 he moved to England with his father.

 

 

A label on the backside says that our painting sat in the collection of Jules Porgès in Paris.

 

Porgès (1839 – 1921), nicknamed The King of Diamonds, was a mighty rich owner of diamond and gold mines in South Africa. He was of Austro-Hungarian Jewish origin. He housed his important art collection of Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Jan Brueghel the Elder and Claude le Lorrain in his huge townhouse in Paris, Avenue Montaigne 18.

 

 

Because it is a 350 years old, diminutive snapshot of daily life in the Dutch Republic.