The Merry Family

A whole family revels around a table, singing, drinking, and smoking, the parents setting an uproarious bad example while the children imitate them - one toddler even being handed a pipe. A note in the picture spells out the moral: as the old sing, so the young pipe. Jan Steen, the great comic moralist of Dutch painting, fills the scene with boisterous warmth and a wink. Now in the Rijksmuseum, the Merry Family is both a celebration of domestic high spirits and a gentle warning that children learn exactly what their elders show them.