Rijksmuseum

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 32.9 cm × width 28.9 cm
outer size: depth 5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, bottom right: D. TENIERS·FEC.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 13 December 2006
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 7 September 2007

Conservation

W.A. Hopman, 1874: varnished and regenerated
W.A. Hopman, 1875: varnish regenerated

Provenance

…; collection Willem Lormier (1682-1758), The Hague;¹…; ? collection Hendrik van Heteren (1672-1749), The Hague, (‘Een gezeldschap van zingende ende drinkende boeren in een binnehuis, door David Teniers. h. 13 en een half d., br. 11 en een half d. [35.3 x 30.1 cm] P.’);² his son Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800); his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, (‘[David Teniers] Beau tableau représentant des paysans et paysannes qui se divertissent, bois h. 13, l. 11 [34 x 28.8 cm]’);³ from whom, fl. 100,000, with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), to the museum, by decree of Lodewijk Napoleon, King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1808;⁴ on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 1999-2011

Object number: SK-A-399

The artist

David Teniers II (Antwerp 1610 - Brussels 1690)

The prolific, highly successful small-scale figure and landscape painter David Teniers II was the eldest son of the artist David Teniers I and Dymphna de Wilde; he was baptized in the Sint-Jacobskerk, Antwerp, on 15 December 1610. Taught by his father, he became a master in the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1632/33.⁵ His first, extant signed and dated picture is of 1633 in which year he took on the first of his four Antwerp apprentices. On 22 June 1637 he married Anna Brueghel (1620-1656), the daughter of Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625), in a ceremony at which Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was a witness; she brought property and wealth to the marriage. He was appointed dean of the guild of St Luke for the year 1645/46.

The following years saw his first contacts with the important collectors, Antoon Triest, Bishop of Ghent, and still more significantly, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the governor of the Spanish Netherlands, whose court painter he became in 1651. Teniers settled in Brussels, and by 1657 was further appointed ‘ayuda da camera’ at the archducal court; his duties consisted in advising on the great range of artistic purchases made by the archduke particularly from the sales of the collections of the executed King Charles I of Great Britain and of the duke of Hamilton (1606-1644). He was sent to England by the count of Fuensaldaña (1603-1661) for this purpose between 1651 and 1655.⁶ For the archduke he also painted capriccio views of the display of his picture collection and prepared an etched catalogue of his Italian paintings, the Theatrum Pictorium, published in 1660. In 1656 following the death of his wife, he married Isabella de Fren. In the same year, his position as court painter to Leopold Wilhelm’s successor was confirmed; but it lapsed in 1659 under the next incumbent, with whom, however, Teniers was on friendly terms.

By 1662 he had bought the estate of Perk and the country house Dry Toren, not far from Het Steen – the property which Rubens had bought in 1635 – from Helena Fourment’s second husband, Jan-Baptist van Brouchoven van Bergeyck. Teniers was instrumental in obtaining from King Philip IV of Spain the charter to found a painters’ academy in Antwerp which was granted in 1663. He continued to work and sell paintings from his house in Brussels, in spite of objections from the Brussels guild of St Luke. In 1663 he was granted the noble status he had greatly desired. But his art was to become less popular and out of fashion, and his last years were marred by financial disputes with the children of his first marriage, so that he died in poverty. He was buried probably on 25 April 1690 in Brussels; his place of burial is not known.

REFERENCES
Klinge in M. Klinge and D. Lüdke (eds.), David Teniers der Jüngere 1610-1690: Alltag und Vergnügen in Flandern, exh. cat. Karlsruhe (Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) 2005-06, pp. 14-19; H. Vlieghe, David Teniers (1610-1690): A Biography, Turnhout 2011

Entry

This work is painted on a support of a single piece of oak timber, from a tree grown in the west German/Netherlandish region, which would have been ready for use from 1623. Although not seen here at his best, there could be no reason to doubt Teniers’s authorship of this work, which is to be dated according to Klinge to the mid-1670s.⁷ The handling can be compared to that in the Inn Scene of 1680 from the Duschnitz collection.⁸ The diminution in quality is accounted for by the fact that Teniers was now in his seventies.

Depicted is a seated mason watched by four companions in an inn, smoking. The mason’s trade of the main protagonist is clearly indicated by the tools – mallet, chisel, hammer and trowel – on the floor. It is unusual for Teniers to make such a specific allusion particularly in his tavern scenes. Whether the artist had in mind any wider reference or meaning other than anecdotal is unclear. He had depicted figures smoking for the whole of his career; by this time it was no longer considered a disreputable practice.⁹

Gregory Martin, 2022

Collection catalogues

1809, p. 69, no. 302; 1843, p. 59, no. 311; 1853, p. 27, no. 274 (fl. 1500); 1858, p. 73, no. 492; 1887, p. 165, no. 1405; 1903, p. 258, no. 2293, (as from the Lormier and Van Heteren collections); 1934, p. 276, no. 2293; 1976, p. 536, no. A 399

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'David (II) Teniers, Mason Smoking with Companions in a Tavern, c. 1675', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5566

(accessed 13 November 2024 02:58:56).