'As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young'

The title is an old Dutch proverb from the popular verses of Jacob Cats: as the old sing, so the young pipe along, meaning children copy the vices of their elders. Steen paints a whole household proving it, three generations laughing, drinking and making music around a table. The grinning man on the right, teaching a small boy to draw on a pipe, is Steen himself, putting his own face on the bad example. Up in the corner a parrot sits on its perch, repeating whatever it hears without understanding a word. Steen made several versions of this scene, and the one in the Mauritshuis is the one later painters kept coming back to.