Joan Miró | Dutch interiors

Joan Miró (1893-1983). Two interior scenes by 17th-century Dutch masters Hendrick Sorgh and Jan Steen inspired him to create a series of three paintings, which represent one of the highlights of Miró's early surrealistic work.

In May 1928, Miró travelled from Paris to the Netherlands and included the Rijksmuseum in his itinerary. He also took two home two postcards, which were colour reproductions of paintings from the Rijksmuseum collection: The lute player by Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh (1661) and Children teaching a cat to dance better known as The dancing lesson by Jan Havicksz. Steen (c. 1660-1679). Both paintings feature a musician, surrounded by one or more listeners, a cat and a dog. In the Dutch interiors, the scenes undergo a complete metamorphosis, as Miró captures these figures in his own surreal fantasy world.  In summer 1928, during a visit to his studio on the family farm Montroig in Catalonia, Miró drew inspiration from these two picture postcards, creating the three paintings later entitled Dutch interiors. Rather than working spontaneously as he usually did, he prepared an extensive series of sketches and drawings. The paintings are currently part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). The postcards, sketches and drawings were donated by Miró to the Museum of Modern Art and the Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona) in the seventies. 

By working in this way, Miró subscribed to a long tradition of ‘creative copying’, whereby artists reinterpreted the masterworks of predecessors, using them as a source of inspiration for new artworks.

Joan Miró | Dutch interiors

Joan Miró (1893-1983). Two interior scenes by 17th-century Dutch masters Hendrick Sorgh and Jan Steen inspired him to create a series of three paintings, which represent one of the highlights of Miró's early surrealistic work.

In May 1928, Miró travelled from Paris to the Netherlands and included the Rijksmuseum in his itinerary. He also took two home two postcards, which were colour reproductions of paintings from the Rijksmuseum collection: The lute player by Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh (1661) and Children teaching a cat to dance better known as The dancing lesson by Jan Havicksz. Steen (c. 1660-1679). Both paintings feature a musician, surrounded by one or more listeners, a cat and a dog. In the Dutch interiors, the scenes undergo a complete metamorphosis, as Miró captures these figures in his own surreal fantasy world.  In summer 1928, during a visit to his studio on the family farm Montroig in Catalonia, Miró drew inspiration from these two picture postcards, creating the three paintings later entitled Dutch interiors. Rather than working spontaneously as he usually did, he prepared an extensive series of sketches and drawings. The paintings are currently part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). The postcards, sketches and drawings were donated by Miró to the Museum of Modern Art and the Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona) in the seventies. 

By working in this way, Miró subscribed to a long tradition of ‘creative copying’, whereby artists reinterpreted the masterworks of predecessors, using them as a source of inspiration for new artworks.