Conversation Piece (The Sense of Smell)

1791 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

genre

This painting is a characteristic work by Jan Ekels, who specialised in sober interiors with one or a few figures. It comes from a series of five canvases depicting the Five Senses, of which four paintings are presently known. Each painting shows two men and a woman in a room, which is furnished with a colourful rug, a covered table with the same kind of chairs.

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About the Artist

Jan the Younger Ekels

1759 – 1793

Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was first trained by his father, Jan Ekels the Elder, and from 1774 to 1781 attended the Amsterdam Tekenacademie. He won prizes in the annual competition for life drawing in 1779 and 1781. In 1776 he went to Paris for two years to further his studies before returning to Amsterdam. Possibly influenced by the revival of interest in Dutch 17th-century art, he became a painter of portraits, genre pieces and 'moderne gezelschappen' (modern conversation pieces ). In 1783 he travelled along the Rhine in Germany with his friends Daniel Dupré (1752-1817) and Jacques Kuyper (1761-1808), visiting the collections at Düsseldorf and Mannheim. After his return in 1784 he became an active member of the Felix Meritis society.

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