Jan Steen's The Fortune Teller

Jessie Steimer
HART 245 Paper #1
February 18, 1997
The Fortune Teller

Jan Steen’s The Fortune Teller caught my eye in the Philadelphia Museum because of its anecdotal quality. In this painting, a gypsy woman reads a young nobleman and his lady their fortunes as her accomplice, the small boy in the bottom right corner of the frame, picks the noble’s pocket. The moral of the story is obvious: gypsies, roving low class people, are not to be trusted. At first I thought this painting merely comedic, but upon closer examination I discovered a deeper level of meaning which the painting’s formal elements conveyed to me. First, Jan Steen establishes the boundary between reality and the fictive world of the painting with his use of space, color, light, and composition. By drawing such a boundary, Steen focuses the viewer’s attention on the painting’s narrative. Steen not only moralizes that gypsies cannot be trusted, but through another formal element, attentiveness to detail, the artist reveals to us his own social commentary.

Jan Steen, The Fortune Teller

Upon closer inspection, there are several inconsistencies in The Fortune Teller which we can recognize through a quick analysis of some of the painting’s formal elements. First of all, the use of linear perspective appears slightly flawed; we can see more than one vanishing point. Although the distortion of linear perspective is subtle, the permutation of space remains evident. Secondly, the color scheme is unrealistic. While vegetation is green, not blue, and people’s skin is rendered in fleshtones, not green, the colors look stagnant and muddy. One would not see vegetation this precise green or rocks this precise shade of grey in the natural world. Once again, the difference between the world of the picture and the world outside the picture plane is subtle, but noticeable. Third, there is no direct light source in the painting. All the figures cast their own shadows as if a different light were striking each of them.

The viewer finds it difficult to determine the location of the sun or the time of day. The absence of artistic convention from this artwork leads the viewer to conclude that the artist has created this world and therefore the painting’s meaning lies not in its technique or artistry, but in its narrative. As an illustration in a children’s book, the narrative, not the artistic verisimilitude, proves the purpose of the painting. The point is not for the viewer to look at the painting and marvel at Jan Steen’s talent and genius as a painter. The painting is not a portrait, religious, or historical; it is merely illustrative of a moment which may or may not be grounded in reality.

The painting’s composition also emphasizes the painting’s narrative. At first glance, the viewer’s eye starts at the bottom left corner in the immediate foreground. Here he has placed the circle of seven figures, obviously the center of the narrative, on the grassy knoll. The viewer’s eye then moves up the hill in an arc to the right and then curves back around to the building on the left. From the painting’s layout we reach an understanding that the parts of the narrative happening in the background are less important than the circle of figures in the foreground. Jan Steen, with all his emphasis on narrative, wants us to focus on the moral of the story when viewing his work.

Beneath the focus on the narrative and its moral, however, lies a deeper level of meaning. Steen actually works to instill in the viewer certain ideas about the issues of social class and gender. The viewer becomes aware of Steen’s views through the formal element of attention to detail. The contrast between low and high class is very strong, and we see the contrast in the details of apparel and skin. The upper class couple is rendered as fashionably dressed. The man wears a fancy feathered and an attractive lace collar. The woman wears a formal floor length dress which covers her legs, denoting her status as a lady. She also wears jewelry, and her hair is tastefully arranged. In contrast, the gypsies in the circle wear dirty clothing. The Fortune Teller herself wears a cloak of rags. The woman sitting to the left of the Fortune Teller and the woman with the baby are both depicted as half-undressed with bare legs, which symbolizes their poverty.
The higher class couple’s skin is paler and cleaner than that of the gypsies. Steen has taken care to show us the wrinkles in the Fortune Teller’s face, her gnarled knuckles and her missing teeth. While the Fortune Teller’s hands are coarse and dark, the lady’s hands are pale and delicate. Steen’s depictions of skin and hands show us the prominence of the distinction between low and high social status.

Steen’s attention to detail also shows us that he, like most men of seventeenth century Dutch society, did not have a high opinion of women. He shows us that women are important for procreation with the figure of the mother with the exposed breast and the baby on her hip in the foreground. He also shows us that women are good for intense labor by depicting the figure of the female water carrier. He shows us that women such as the coquette with the fan are shallow gossips and flirts. The upper class woman who looks on as her husband’s pocket is picked is Steen’s example of female gullibility. Possibly the most objectified female form in the painting is the figure on the ground with her back to us. Her exposed shoulder makes her appear erotic. We cannot see her face, making her a spectacle without individuality offering herself for the viewer’s gaze and imagination. Most importantly, Steen show us woman’s lack of integrity in the gypsy figure who cheats the couple out of their money. None of the female figures in this picture portrays a very flattering stereotype of women.

Our examination of the formal elements of this painting leave us with the questions, what did this painting mean to a seventeenth century Dutch audience? How is the level of meaning different for a present-day viewer? Dutch patrons of the arts in the seventeenth century were mostly middle or upper class people who could afford to own paintings like The Fortune Teller. A middle class viewer saw this painting as moralizing directly to him or her. Whether or not the seventeenth century viewer agreed with Steen’s ideas about class and gender, they were ideas with which he felt accustomed. The seventeenth century Dutch viewer would see the created world of the painting as a projection of “the way things are.”

Contrastingly, a present-day viewer would be struck with the morality of the narrative, but would see the painting as moralizing to someone else in a different time frame. A present day viewer picks up on the comedic level of the narrative more than the morality. He sees the scene as “this is NOT the way things are.” The meaning of the painting has evolved for the viewer as society has evolved over the course of history. However, it still shows class and gender differences which are still very relevant today, though depicted with different stereotypes.

With his use of space, color, light, composition and attention to detail in The Fortune Teller, Jan Steen sets up a dialectic between himself and the viewer. We see from the distortion of space, the color scheme, the sources of light, and the composition, that Steen desires for his viewer to focus on the moral of the story, namely that gypsies are untrustworthy. However, a deeper level of meaning, Steen’s commentary on societal issues comes clear to the viewer with his attention to detail.