The Music Lesson
Jacob Ochtervelt (Dutch, 1634-1682)
1671
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Materials & printing
Archival matte paper, 189 g/m² (10.3 mil), sourced from Japan, printed with multicolor water-based inkjet so every brushstroke stays crisp. Framed prints arrive ready to hang in a .75″ ayous-wood frame with an acrylite front. Sized to standard frames by cropping, never stretching — at most about 3% comes off one edge, which isn’t noticeable on most pieces, and we only offer a size when it stays that small.
Shipping & returns
Made to order and delivered in 5–8 business days (2–4 to print, 3–4 in transit). US shipping only for now. Because each print is made for your order, all sales are final — but if it arrives damaged or defective, send us a photo within 14 days and we’ll replace it free. Full policy.
Why is it this affordable?
A thin, flat margin on every piece — just enough to keep the store running. Most of what you pay is the print itself. We only sell sizes that reproduce at full quality, and we don’t mark up the large sizes the way most shops do.
About this work
Jacob Ochtervelt animated this intimate scene with delicate light, which illuminates the young woman and leaves the young man partly in shadow. The artist positioned the figures in angled poses suggesting a playful interaction. The girl holds a violin, an instrument then more often played by men, and points authoritatively to the music score, another reversal of typical gender roles for the period. By upending these conventions, Ochtervelt quietly commented on the rituals of romance in the 17th century.
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 80.2 × 65.5 cm (31 × 25 3/16 in.)
Museum record · 2 owners · 11 exhibitions
Provenance
- Pieter van Winter, Amsterdam (died 1807); by descent to his heirs until the division of his property in 1818, when it was assigned to the portion of his daughter Lucretia Johanna van Winter.
- Presumably Prince Anatole Demidoff, Villa San Donato, near Florence (died 1870); by descent to his nephew Prince Paul Demidoff (died 1885) and later to Paul Demidoff’s widow, Helena Troubetskoi, Pratolino, near Florence; purchased by Martin A. Ryerson (died 1932), Chicago, through Durand-Ruel, Paris in 1890; intermittently on loan to the Art Institute from 1911; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1933.
Exhibitions
- Toledo Museum of Art, Inaugural Exhibition, January 17–February 12, 1912.
- Detroit Institute of Arts, The Ninth Loan Exhibition: Dutch Genre and Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, October 16–November 10, 1929.
- Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, June 1–November 1933.
- Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, June 1–November 1, 1934.
- New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Holland Indoors and Outdoors, January 10–29, 1938.
- New York, Duveen Galleries, Paintings by the Great Dutch Masters of the Seventeenth Century, October 8–November 7, 1942.
- Montreal, Art Association, Loan Exhibition of Great Paintings: Five Centuries of Dutch Art, March 9–April 9, 1944.
- Muskegon, Illinois, The Hackley Art Gallery, October 30–November 20, 1949.
- San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, The Age of Rembrandt: An Exhibition of Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, October 10–November 13, 1966; traveled to The Toledo Museum of Art, November 26, 1966–January 8, 1967, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, January 21–March 5, 1967.
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, March 18–May 13, 1984; traveled to Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, June 8–August 12, 1984, London, Royal Academy of Arts, September 7–November 18, 1984.
- Art Institute of Chicago, The Silk Road and Beyond: Travel Trade and Transformation, September 30, 2006-April 22, 2007, no cat. Washington, DC, Dumbarton Oaks, Visiting Masterpiece: Jacob Ochtervelt, The Music Lesson, February 17-October 30, 2020.
