By Ella Bernard

While recently in Amsterdam, I stopped into the Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands’ most comprehensive museum of Dutch art and history. While walking through the Gallery of Honor, which includes Rembrant’s massive Night Watch, something else stuck out to me: Judith Leyster’s Jolly Toper. It’s an altogether unserious piece beside some of the museum's most revered treasures. I was held for a moment by his jovial smile and flushed cheeks, features unfamiliar to me when I’ve previously observed portraiture from similar eras. I didn’t pause too long, but I’ve remained intrigued by one of the few depictions of honest joy in classic portraiture I’ve ever encountered. While researching where else we may historically find genuine smiles in portraiture, I found this character isn't alone in disposition, particularly amongst other Dutch painters, contemporaries of Leyster. What was happening in the Dutch Golden Era (roughly, 1575-1675) to produce a phenomenon of characters who are so sincere in their joy?

There's a common theme amongst many of these smiling figures in Dutch portraiture: drunkenness. It's clear to see in their eyes. The carefree air of these paintings is a sharp contrast to its contemporary portraiture in other parts of Europe. It’s easy to write these smiles off as drunken digressions, painted jokes, but is there an underlying statement? I admit, the former is likely the case for Leyster’s Jolly Toper. Jolly Toper’s character is the ‘Peeckelhaeringh’, a 17th century trope in comedic plays named after the roaring, gluttonous thirst that accompanies eating too much pickled herring. His shrug towards his empty jar certainly aids the jester’s narrative.

While the Dutch may be famous for their drinking habits, I do believe there is a deeper motivator for painting these drunken smiles: relief. With a shift towards humanism at the beginning of the protestant reformation, Dutch Golden Age portraiture is a visual record of a culture letting go, by depicting drinking, singing, and merriment. A contemporary of Leyster and long-time admirer of Carravagio, Gerard Van Honthorst’s habit of painting musical instruments adds to the celebratory aura of these pieces, seen in The Merry Fiddler and The Violin Player. The Dutch became quite fond of depicting lower classes, finding intrigue in the mundane and everyday as they moved away from strict Catholic belief systems and instead began to structure society around human interests. “Dutchness” was once a synonym for “licentiousness,” fit for critiquing both art and behaviour, because of an erotic association of the smile in other artistic hotspots at the time. Nicholas Jeeves wrote in an Essay entitled ‘The Serious and the Smirk’ of 17th century Dutch creatives being “fascinated with recording the fullness of life,” which could explain the lack of rigidity and poise in these figures, in addition to their clear drunken dispositions. Van Honthorst supposedly took his inspiration from Caravaggio during his visits to Italy, and rushed home to Ultrecht to mimic his depictions of something “real and worthwhile.”

Gerard van Honthorst, *The Merry Fiddler (*1623)

Van Honthorst, *The Violin Player* (1626)

Why is the smile so absent from centuries worth of portraiture? When we do see smiles, they are slight, yet the focal point of the piece, such is the allure of Mona Lisa. I wouldn’t call the feeling Mona Lisa evokes particularly joyous, if anything her closed lips and knowing stare makes me uneasy. Jeeves suggests that the common assumption that bad teeth were a motivating factor against smiling isn’t true. Everyone had bad teeth, and they were for many years not considered a factor of attractiveness. Jeeves rather suggests that the real reason we so rarely see real smiles in portraiture is because smiles are “a response, not an expression per se, and so it can neither be easily maintained nor easily recorded.” This might explain why the Mona Lisa’s smile looks so pained, as Da Vinci coaxed her on for hours on end to hold the pose. The difficult task of getting the subject to smile throughout the long painting process suggests the Dutch Golden Age artists would have to be very intentional in depicting such a degree of joy. Leyster and van Honthorst’s portraits behave as if they were photographs, capturing a reaction instead of a pose, like van Honthorst’s A Laughing Violinist. The subject appears to be responding to something or someone to his left. If we ignored that this is oil painting, we’d imagine his lustful grin and celebration would last only a second or two.

Gerard Van Honthorst, *A Laughing Violinist* (1656)

There is a historical element of classism when searching for smiles. Because the smile was associated with drunkenness and promiscuity, the upper class had a distaste for being depicted with smiling faces. The rare exception is in portraiture of women. They don’t bear big toothy grins like The Violin Player, but a slight upturn at the corner of their lips is a suggestive hint of their promiscuity and femininity. Women were not expected to be as rigid. Portrait of Isabella Brant by her husband Peter Paul Reubens is a prime example. While contemporary with the works of Leyster and van Honthorst, her smile is depicted in a very refined way.

Peter Paul Reubens, *Portrait of Isabella Brant* (c.1620)

St. Jean-Baptiste De La Salle’s Rules of Christian Decorum and Civility from 1703 states:

“There are some people who raise their upper lip so high… that their teeth are almost entirely visible. This is entirely contradictory to decorum, which forbids you to allow your teeth to be uncovered, since nature gave us lips to conceal them.”

The goal of most portraiture was “not to capture a moment, but a moral uncertainty,” (Jeeves, 2013). A portrait should reflect the individual’s good morals. Because most portraiture was commissionable only by the wealthy, it was a way of visually extending their distinguishment within their class. By painting lower classes, the Dutch portraits by contrast are more accessible, allowing us into the lives of their subjects and giving us a glimpse of real life.

The Dutch were playing by the rules of a different social order, linked to the religious upheaval in the country during the Dutch Golden Age of portraiture. In prior centuries, depictions of big, wide smiles were considered crude and overtly sexual. To depict one would instigate a flurry of conversation and critique around a piece. The appearance of the smile might have been further suppressed by a desire so as not to break the status quo. Carravagio’s Triumphant Eros in the 16th century did just this. Despite the figure being completely nude, it was his smile that was deemed vulgar (Jeeves). Jeeves writes “Caravaggio, a rebel and sociopath to his core, revelled in the scandal.”

There is no mistake that we see these smiles in the Netherlands more than anywhere else in Europe at the time. The Dutch created an art scene that allowed for transcending boundaries of class and playing with raunchy images, setting an altogether casual tone that stemmed from a newfound enjoyment of everyday life. An interest in what the individual was doing or feeling in the moment, rather than intentions of upholding a facade of devoutness or wealth. This sentiment of focusing on the everyday still prevails within Dutch culture, evident even to first time visitors. The presence of Jolly Toper in the Hall of Honor embodies a way of life that I envy: functional while not taking things too seriously. These figures, in all their drunken glory, felt like a breath of fresh air to encounter in the Rijksmuseum. They were inviting and invited me to be non-optimizing. I suspect this may be exactly what the artists intended.

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