Subjects Teniers was known as a hard worker who was extremely prolific. About two thousand paintings are thought to have been painted by the artist. Another major influence on David Teniers the Younger's early work was the work of the Flemish painter
Adriaen Brouwer. Adriaen Brouwer was working in Antwerp from the mid-1620s to the mid-1630s after an extended residence in
Haarlem. He was an important innovator of
genre painting through his vivid depictions of peasants, soldiers and other 'lower class' individuals, whom he showed engaged in drinking, smoking, card or dice playing, fighting, music making etc. usually in taverns or rustic settings. Brouwer also contributed to the development of the genre of
tronies, i.e. head or facial studies, which investigate varieties of expression. Teniers's early work up to the end of the thirties was very close to that of Brouwer in terms of subject matter, technique, color and composition. He took from Brouwer the gross types, placed in the characteristic smoky, dimly lit taverns. He also treated these subjects with the same monochrome tonality as Brouwer. The personal style of Teniers was visible from the outset. An important distinction was that unlike Brouwer who placed these genre scenes mainly indoors, Teniers gradually moved his scenes into the open air and started to give the landscape a major place in his work from the 1640s. This was a common development in Flemish painting at the time. The smoky and monochrome tonality of the interiors from the 1630s was replaced by a luminous, silvery atmosphere, in which the peasants sit at their ease, conversing or playing cards. These paintings show a radical move towards a more positive attitude towards country life and the peasantry than was reflected in his earlier satirical pieces influenced by Brouwer. Teniers's scenes with peasants were so well known that compositions with this subject came to be called 'tenierkens' ('small teniers') and tapestries with peasant scenes were referred to as 'Teniers tapestries'.
Country and pastoral landscapes In the early 1640s Teniers began to paint more landscape paintings and in these he developed his own pictorial language. He started to focus on the Flemish countryside as a subject in itself rather than solely as a backdrop to his outdoor peasant scenes. In his landscapes he paid particular attention to the variegated light of the Flemish countryside in different weather conditions. In his
River landscape with rainbow he included thin, dark clouds, with streaking sun rays piercing through rain and a rainbow in the left background. Along with Rubens, Teniers was among the first Flemish 17th-century artists to include rainbows in his compositions, not for their religious or allegorical meaning, but rather as another means by which to showcase his careful study of nature. Other examples of this include other works from the mid-1640s such as
The Reaping (Hermitage Museum). Teniers depicted real as well as imaginary landscapes. Although he did not intend these works to be topographically accurate, he spent a lot of time sketching in the countryside. This explains why certain motifs recur in his landscape oeuvre. In the 1660s Teniers started to paint pastoral scenes. It is likely that the increased prominence of rural life and nature in his work of that period was connected to his 1662 purchase of Drij Toren, a country house in Perk in which he maintained a studio. In contrast to the sophisticated compositions he painted as a court painter, the landscapes he painted at Perk stand out by their simplicity. They expressed an Arcadian view of life in the countryside and eulogized the advantages of a peaceful existence on the land. He presented the rural life as happy and carefree. The landscapes themselves were a combination of fantasy and reality. Teniers's interest in pastoral paintings has been linked to his ambition to be elevated to the nobility. Agriculture and animal husbandry were regarded as proper occupations of the nobility. An estate in the countryside was therefore a necessary part of the status of nobles of that time. Teniers had himself acquired the country estate Drij Toren in Perk near Rubens' country estate
Het Steen. Teniers painted his own country estate several times. In the
''View of Drij Toren at Perk, with David Teniers' family'' (c. 1660,
Boughton House) Teniers placed his estate in the center of the composition and included a portrait of his family, servants and tenant farmers at the harvest. He paid homage to Rubens by including Rubens' nearby estate called
Het Steen in the far distance. He depicted himself in the picture as a country
gentleman, who through his graceful bearing and costly clothing sets himself apart from the servants and toiling peasants in the picture. Teniers also made many paintings of other châteaux and estates. Only a few of the châteaux and estates he represented in these paintings are known. It is believed that they are imaginary creations intended to present a generic view of what a country estate should look like: large, stately and dominating the countryside around it. These paintings often include depictions of the tenant farmers who pay deference to their masters. They thus give expression to the prevalent worldview of the ruling class of his day, of which Teniers aspired to be a part, which was that the good and humble peasant would always show reverence to his noble lord. '', c. 1647–1651, oil on copper Teniers's paintings of the Archduke's collection fall into a genre referred to as 'gallery paintings' or 'pictures of collections'. Gallery paintings typically depict large rooms in which many paintings and other precious items are displayed in elegant surroundings. Antwerp artists
Jan Brueghel the Elder and
Frans Francken the Younger were the first to create paintings of art and curiosity collections in the 1620s. The genre was further developed by
Hieronymus Francken the Younger,
Willem van Haecht and
Hendrik Staben. The genre became immediately popular in Antwerp where many artists practised it in Teniers's time: they included artists such as Jan Brueghel the Younger,
Cornelis de Baellieur,
Hans Jordaens,
Gonzales Coques,
Jan van Kessel the Elder and
Hieronymus Janssens. Later practitioners included Teniers's presumed pupil
Gillis van Tilborgh as well as
Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg,
Jacob de Formentrou and
Balthasar van den Bossche. Teniers played an important role in the development of the genre of gallery paintings and his mid-17th-century gallery paintings of the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm are among the most famous examples of the genre. The earliest works in this genre depicted art objects together with other items such as scientific instruments or peculiar natural specimens. These paintings expressed the Early Modern culture of curiosity, in which art works and scientific instruments were mixed together in so-called
cabinets of curiosities. The persons populating the galleries in these early works are 'virtuosi' who appear as keen to discuss scientific instruments as to admire an artwork. Teniers transformed the genre in the mid 17th century by moving away from the depiction of
cabinets of curiosities to depicting art galleries, and in particular the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. In the final, 'late' phase of the genre from c. 1660 to 1690, artists such as Teniers's pupil Gillis van Tilborgh went further in removing non-art objects from the gallery and introduced figures in the gallery setting who claimed elite status by virtue of their knowledge of (and, as in some cases artists are present, ability to produce) art. '', 1650–52, oil on canvas Teniers first depicted Archduke Leopold Wilhelm with his collection in two pictures dated 1651 (one in
Petworth House and the other in the
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium). The only other dated gallery painting by Teniers is dated 1653. The fact that the other gallery paintings of Teniers are not dated has made it difficult to establish a chronology and evolution of his work in this genre. Two of the ten known gallery paintings with Archduke Leopold Wilhelm have similar compositions and include the same paintings: the large, undated canvas in the
Kunsthistorisches Museum likely followed the equally large painting dated 1651 in Petworth House. The others are all independently composed and display different works or when the same works are included they are hung in a different order. It is likely that these gallery paintings of the Archduke's collection were painted to memorialize and eulogize it and anyone associated with it. Teniers also painted a few gallery paintings showing artists at work or cognoscenti inspecting a collection. An example is
A picture gallery with two men examining a seal and a red chalk drawing, and a monkey present (At Sotheby's New York, 24 January 2002, lot 169). These gallery paintings are heavy with symbolism and allegory and are a reflection of the intellectual preoccupations of the age, including the cultivation of personal virtue and the importance of connoisseurship. They accentuate the notion that the powers of discernment associated with connoisseurship are socially superior to or more desirable than other forms of knowing. Teniers also created an allegorical or satirical interpretation of a gallery painting in the drawing
''Monkeys' Masquerade: The Painter’s Studio, an Artist Seated'' (
British Museum). The drawing is clearly a pun on the popular 'art as the ape of nature' present in many pictures of collections through the inclusion of a monkey among the art lovers. His brother
Abraham Teniers was involved in organizing the publication of the work. The first official publication of the work in bound book format was published by Hendrick Aertssens in Brussels in 1660 (although the title page states the date as 1658). The title page of the book refers to it as 'Hoc Amphiteatrum Picturarum' ('This amphitheatre of pictures'). The publication is now often referred to as
Theatrum pictorium ('Theatre of Paintings'). Teniers used full colour in the modelli, rather than
grisaille. This could mean that he intended these reproductions to function as independent records of some of these Italian paintings in the Archduke's collection. From the many modelli, which have been preserved, it is obvious that Teniers's copies constitute a true record of the originals even while he left out details and painted them in his typical fluid and transparent manner. The engraving of the catalog by engravers who worked after the modelli, not the originals, was started by 1656. In the 17th century there existed no efficient method for inverting images. As a result, most of the prints in the catalog are reverse images of the originals. Each print gives the name of the author of the original work on the left hand side (indicated by the letter 'p' for 'pinxit', Latin for 'painted by') and the engraver of the print on the right hand side (indicated by the letter 's' for 'sculpsit', Latin for 'engraved by'). Some editions also indicated the original dimensions of the paintings. Teniers's modelli and the
Theatrum pictorium serve as a record for some important paintings the whereabouts of which are currently unknown. For instance, the modelli in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art of the
Old Age in Search of Youth attributed by Teniers to
Correggio and the
Adam and Eve after
Padovanino are the most important records of these lost paintings. Comical scenes with monkeys appearing in human attire and a human environment are a pictorial genre that was initiated in Flemish painting in the 16th century and was subsequently further developed in the 17th century. Monkeys were regarded as shameless and impish creatures and excellent imitators of human behaviour. These depictions of monkeys enacting various human roles were a playful metaphor for all the folly in the world. In 16th century visual and literary sources, the image of the monkey was typically used to symbolise the unreasonable and foolish aspect of human nature. It is this quality that Teniers refers to in his
Allegory of Vanitas (1633, private collection) in which he included a chained monkey in fool's clothes who is looking through a telescope from the wrong end. In addition, monkeys were associated with the
Antichrist and the
Devil and regarded as the opposite of god. In Dürer's print
Madonna with a monkey the
Virgin, who represents holiness, is contrasted with the monkey chained at her feet who symbolizes evil. The Flemish engraver
Pieter van der Borcht the Elder introduced the singerie as an independent theme around 1575 in a series of prints, which were strongly embedded in the artistic tradition of
Pieter Bruegel the Elder. These prints were widely disseminated and the theme was then picked up by other Flemish artists. The first one to do so was the Antwerp artist
Frans Francken the Younger, who was quickly followed by
Jan Brueghel the Elder,
the Younger and
Sebastiaen Vrancx. David Teniers the Younger, following in the footsteps of his father-in-law Jan Brueghel the Elder, became the principal practitioner of the genre and developed it further with his younger brother
Abraham Teniers. The two brothers were able to cater to the prevailing taste in the art market and were thus instrumental in spreading the genre outside Flanders. Later in the 17th century
Nicolaes van Verendael started to paint these 'monkey scenes' as well. Many of Tenier's guardroom interiors date to the mid-1640s and are painted on copper. The subject of the guardroom and its contents such as armor, colorful flags and banners, saddles, drums, pistols allowed Teniers to showcase his brilliance as a still life painter. Teniers also used the subject to demonstrate his ability to use light to achieve a perfect representation of the quality of painted objects. The armour depicted in the guardroom pictures was already out of date at the time it was painted since metal armours, breast plates and helmets fell out of use from the 1620s. It is possible that in line with the moralizing intent of the genre, the armour is a reference to the
vanitas motif of the transience of power and fame. In one of his guardroom interiors referred to as
A guardroom with a self-portrait of the artist (At Sotheby's London sale of 7 July 2010, lot 12) Teniers included his own portrait at about 36 years of age. The artist has dossed himself out as an officer wearing an exotic fur-trimmed coat and a fur hat with plume. This self-portrait within this picture may have been intended as a
tronie, which often depicted a
stock character in an exotic costume. Teniers combined the genres of singerie and guardroom scene in the composition
Guardroom with monkeys (Private collection). At a first glance, the Guardroom with Monkeys is no different from other guardroom scenes. It is clear from the round moon above the door that the scene is set late at night. The off-duty monkeys have removed their armor, stowed their pikes and rolled up their company flag and placed it against the far wall. Like their human counterparts, the monkey soldiers are loitering about, some of them are drinking and smoking, others are playing games. At the door a cat wearing respectable civilian clothes is led into the room by two monkeys who restrain it. The contrast between the properly dressed cat and the bizarre outfit of the monkey soldiers, one of which is wearing a funnel on his head while another has an upturned pot on his head, raises doubt as to the legitimacy of the monkeys' authority. As was customary in singeries, the dress and behaviour of the monkeys highlight the foolishness of human undertakings. Teniers may also have intended to criticize the bloated military in the Southern Netherlands in the 1630s. While alchemists were mainly concerned with transmutation of base metals into more noble ones, their endeavors were wider and also involved the use of their techniques to diagnose or cure people (the so-called 'iatrochemistry', which aimed to provide chemical solutions to diseases and medical ailments). There was therefore an overlap with the role of physicians. One of the popular methods of medical diagnosis was the so-called 'uroscopy', the analysis of the urine of a patient. Whereas this was considered a valid diagnostic method in the Middle Ages its validity had come under attack by more modern-minded physicians in the 17th century. The practice of uroscopy and the questions surrounding its use by medical practitioners were the impetus for genre paintings on the theme of the 'piskijker' ('pee examiner'). They typically showed the inspection by a physician or a quack of a flask of urine provided by a young woman. If the inspection revealed the image of a fetus this was proof that the woman was pregnant. It is assumed that the genre was started by Adriaen Brouwer and that a now lost work of Brouwer inspired Teniers and
Gerard ter Borch to paint works in this genre. An example of Teniers's contribution to the genre is the composition
Village doctor looking at a urine sample (1640s,
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium), which shows a man examining a urine flask for the purpose of medical diagnosis while an anxious peasant woman is looking on. Teniers also depicted physicians performing various operations such as foot and back operations.
Still lifes Teniers is not generally known as a still life painter. Nevertheless, many of his interiors include elaborate still lifes, some of them painted by specialist still life painters, others painted by Teniers himself. The subject of the guardroom and all its trappings such as armor, colorful flags and banners, saddles, drums and pistols gave Teniers ample opportunity to showcase his capabilities as a still life painter. This can be seen in the
Guardroom with the Deliverance of Saint Peter (c. 1645–47,
Metropolitan Museum of Art). A few independent still life paintings have also been attributed to Teniers. One of the most accomplished ones of these is the
Still-life with overturned jug (At Sotheby's on 5 December 2007, lot 5).The work is dated to the mid-1630s on stylistic grounds. This work seems to show the influence of the Dutch monochrome still life painters. In particular, its simplicity and studied informality and the use of subtle muted colours bring to mind the work of contemporary artists from Leiden and Haarlem. However, is not clear whether Teniers was in fact directly influenced by these artists, and if so how. No similar still life paintings are known in Antwerp at this early date. At the time Teniers created this still life painting, the principal influence on him was Adriaen Brouwer, who had returned from Haarlem to Antwerp around 1631–2. To date Brouwer is not known to have been active as a painter of still lifes. While Teniers's early work also reveals his knowledge of Dutch artists in Rotterdam such as
Pieter de Bloot and the Saftleven brothers, none of these artists were still life painters. The still life may possibly reflect the influence of the important Dutch still life painter
Jan Davidsz. de Heem, who had arrived in Antwerp in 1635, the year this picture was made.
Collaborations Collaboration between artists specialized in distinctive genres was a defining feature of artistic practice in 17th-century Antwerp. Teniers was likewise a frequent collaborator with fellow artists. His collaborators included
Lucas van Uden,
Jan Davidsz. de Heem,
Adriaen van Utrecht,
Jacques d'Arthois, his nephew
Jan van Kessel the Younger and
Gualterus Gysaerts. Teniers collaborated on a series of twenty copper panels commissioned by two members of the
Moncada family, a
noble Catalan family. The panels illustrate the deeds of Guillermo Ramón Moncada and Antonio Moncada, two brothers from the Moncada House who lived at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century in Sicily. Five prominent Flemish artists collaborated on the panels. Of 12 scenes devoted to Guillermo Ramón Moncada,
Willem van Herp painted six,
Luigi Primo five and
Adam Frans van der Meulen one. Teniers was responsible for all eight panels describing the deeds of Antonio Moncada. He painted them not long after the first part of the series had been finished.
Jan van Kessel the Elder, a nephew of Teniers and a still life specialist, realised the decorative borders framing each episode.
Garland paintings Another example of a collaborative painting made by Teniers is the composition
The Soap Bubbles (c. 1660–1670,
Louvre). In this work Teniers collaborated again with his nephew
Jan van Kessel the Elder who painted a decorative garland representing the
four elements around a cartouche showing a young man blowing soap bubbles, which was painted by Teniers. The young man blowing bubbles and the elements in the garland surrounding him such as the flowers, the dead fish and the armor and flags are all references to the theme of
vanitas, i.e. the transience of life and the worthless nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. This type of painting belongs to the genre of the 'garland painting', which was invented and developed by Teniers's father-in-law Jan Brueghel the Elder in the first two decades of the 17th century. Garland paintings typically show a flower garland around a devotional image or portrait. Other artists involved in the early development of the genre included
Hendrick van Balen,
Andries Danielsz.,
Peter Paul Rubens and
Daniel Seghers. The genre was initially connected to the visual imagery of the
Counter-Reformation movement. The genre was further inspired by the cult of veneration and devotion to
Mary prevalent at the
Habsburg court (then the rulers over the Southern Netherlands) and in Antwerp generally. The earliest specimens of the genre often include a devotional image of Mary in the
cartouche but in later examples the image in the cartouche could be religious as well as secular as is the case of Teniers's
The Soap Bubbles. ==Influence==