Painting and Sculpture

Children Teaching a Cat to Dance

Children Teaching a Cat to Dance or The Dancing Lesson is an oil-on-panel genre painting by Jan Steen, executed c.1660–1679 and now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The painting depicts a group of children attempting to make a cat dance to the music of a shawm. The cat is screeching and the dog barking but the children are having fun. However, the old man at the window clearly disapproves of their behaviour. The work is a typical example of Steen's indoor scenes of everyday Dutch life.

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See also

• ▸American Progress
• ▸Fengguan
• ▸Conrad the Corsair

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.