The Music Lesson (1671): Artwork and History

The Music Lesson (1671) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Jacob Ochtervelt (Dutch, 1634-1682).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the 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.

Object facts

• Title: The Music Lesson
• Date: 1671
• Artist attribution: Jacob Ochtervelt (Dutch, 1634-1682)
• Place of origin: Holland
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 80.2 × 65.5 cm (31 × 25 3/16 in.); Framed: 98.4 × 81.6 × 6.4 cm (38 3/4 × 32 1/8 × 2 1/2 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1933.1088

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.