Street Musicians at the Door
.jpg)
Street Musicians at the Door (
Content and interpretation
Street Musicians at the Door depicts members of a wealthy family (a mother, child, and a maid) interacting in a friendly encounter with two musicians at the door of their house,
Painting style
The painting style of Street Musicians at the Door uses variations in color and technique to contrast the two worlds that it depicts. The women of the house are lit brightly and dressed colorfully, and the interior is depicted carefully and precisely.[4] The exterior streetscape leading to a church is again drawn in perspective,[7] but appears flattened, muted, darkened, and roughly painted.[4] The people in the painting, similarly, are shown in different styles, contrasting the dignified faces of the women with the more caricatured depiction of the musicians.[8]
A minor detail of the interior, the Pythagorean tiling of its flooring, has been called out as an example of the long history of use of this tiling pattern.[9]
Provenance and collection
Street Musicians at the Door was owned in the late 18th century by French art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun,[10] and later by Dorothy L. Liggett Kilpatrick (Mrs. Claude Kilpatrick), a daughter of tobacconist and Liggett Group founder John E. Liggett. Kilpatrick bequested it to the Saint Louis Art Museum on her death in 1928, and the gift was carried out by her daughter, Mary Lois Kilpatrick Perry (Mrs. Eugene A. Perry).[8] As of 2020[update] it is on display in the museum's galleries.[1]
Related works
Similar doorway settings were frequently used by Ochtervelt, as the first examples of a genre that became known as "entrance hall painting";[1] Street Musicians has been called "one of the more striking examples" of this genre.[7] The doorway, in Street Musicians and these other paintings, acts as a picture frame through which the rest of the world can be observed.[2] Two more of Ochtervelt's entrance hall paintings also depict scenes with street musicians;[5] others include sellers of fish and produce, similarly shown through the door of a home.[4]
References
- ^ a b c d Street Musicians at the Door, Saint Louis Art Museum, retrieved 2020-10-07
- ^ ISBN 9780520952133
- ISBN 9780300102376
- ^ ISBN 9781351608732. See discussion following Figure 6.2, which reproduces Street Musicians at the Door.
- ^ hdl:1808/5261. See especially pp. 120–124 and 146–147.
- S2CID 144020901
- ^ ISBN 9780520221352
- ^ JSTOR 40714404
- ISBN 978-0-88385-555-3.
- ISBN 9789004276758