Steen, JAN, Dutch painter, the son of a Leyden brewer, was born in that city in 1626, went (it is believed) to Haarlem about 1644 and studied under Adrian van Ostade, joined the Leyden guild of painters in 1648, for some time carried on the trade of a brewer at Delft, and died in his native city in 1679. Steen was a painter of the same stamp as Rembrandt. A sympathetic observer of human life, he painted genre-pictures from every plane of life, the lowest as well as the highest. Although there is a decided ethic leaven in his work, it is softened by the spirit of sympathetic toleration and lightened by the play of comedy. The grave humour of his style is best seen in such pictures as the 'Doctor Visiting his Patient,' a 'Cavalier giving Lessons on the Guitar to a Lady,' 'Domestic Life,' 'Tavern Company,' 'The Oyster Girl,' 'Work and Idleness,' 'Bad Company,' 'Old
Age,' and particularly the pieces of childhood (e.g. the pictures called 'St Nicholas' and 'Twelfth Night'). See F. Wedmore in Temple Bar, vol. ii.