Jan Steen was born in Leiden but is said to have studied with Nicolas Knüpfer in Utrecht, Adrian van Ostade in Haarlem and Jan van Goyen, whose daughter he married in 1649, in The Hague. He continued to move from town to town, being recorded in The Hague, Leiden and Delft during the course of his career. He was an enormously prolific painter who concentrated on lively genre scenes, although he also painted portraits and religious and mythological subjects. His work, which is markedly uneven in quality, is characterized by a robust humour, a sense of theatre and, often, a moralizing intention.Steen's The Village School is in the satirical tradition of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's print The Ass at School which illustrates a popular saying: 'Though an ass goes to school in order to learn, he'll still be an ass, not a horse, when he returns'. In Steen's school there is little to be learnt from the short-sighted teacher who is so intent on sharpening his quill that he fails to notice the chaos around him. Some children who are keen to learn have gathered around the schoolmistress who corrects their spelling but others fight, sing, make fun of the teachers and even sleep. On the right a child hands a pair of spectacles to an owl, a familiar symbol of foolishness in Steen's work.