David Teniers II

David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II (bapt. 15 December 1610 – 25 April 1690) was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile artist known for his prolific output.Teniers the Younger, David
at the National Gallery of Art He was an innovator in a wide range of genres such as history painting, genre painting, landscape painting, portrait and still life. He is now best remembered as the leading Flemish genre painter of his day.David Teniers (II)
at the Netherlands Institute for Art History Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene, pictures of collections and scenes with alchemists and physicians.

He was court painter and the curator of the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the art-loving Governor General of the Habsburg Netherlands. He created a printed catalogue of the collections of the Archduke.Hans Vlieghe, ''David Teniers II'', Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 13 March 2017 He was the founder of the Antwerp Academy, where young artists were trained to draw and sculpt in the hope of reviving Flemish art after its decline following the death of the leading Flemish artists Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck in the early 1640s.Karel Davids, Bert De Munck, ''Innovation and Creativity in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Cities'', Routledge, 2016 He influenced the next generation of Northern genre painters as well as French Rococo painters such as Antoine Watteau.Dr Christoph Vogtherr, ''Watteau, Antoine (1684–1721) L’Accordée du Village''
at the Sir John Soane's Museum in London

Life

Initial career in Antwerp

David Teniers the Younger was born in Antwerp as the son of David Teniers the Elder and Dymphna de Wilde. His father was a painter of altarpieces and small-scale cabinet paintings.Frans Jozef Peter Van den Branden, ''Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool'', Antwerpen, 1883, p. 754, 981–1008 . David was baptised at St. James' Church on 15 December 1610. Three of his brothers also became painters: Juliaan III (1616–1679), Theodoor (1619–1697) and Abraham (1629–1670). The work of his two oldest brothers is virtually unknown. The work of his youngest brother Abraham was very close to David's own.

From 1626, David the younger studied under his father.Charles Sterling, Maryan W. Ainsworth, Charles Talbot, Martha Wolff, Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Jonathan Brown, John Hayes, ''Fifteenth- to Eighteenth-Century European Paintings: France, Central Europe, The Netherlands, Spain, and Great Britain''
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New, 1998, pp. 129–133. A collaborator of his father early on in his career, the father and son pair created together a series of twelve panels recounting stories from Torquato Tasso's epic ''Gerusalemme Liberata'' (Museo del Prado, Madrid). His father was frequently in financial straits and his debts landed him occasionally in jail. David the younger had to make copies of old masters in order to support the family. In 1632–33, he was registered as 'wijnmeester' (i.e. the son of a master) in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke.

A David Teniers is recorded in the Antwerp records as having been issued in 1635 a passport to visit Paris. The artist likely also travelled to England as on 29 December 1635 of the same year he signed in Dover a contract with the Antwerp art dealer Chrisostomos van Immerseel, then resident in England.

Rubens received in 1636 a commission from King Philip IV of Spain to create a series of mythological paintings to decorate the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge of the King near Madrid. The mythological scenes depicted in the series were largely based on the ''Metamorphoses'' of Ovid. Rubens realized this important commission with the assistance of a large number of Antwerp painters such as Jacob Jordaens, Cornelis de Vos, Jan Cossiers, Peter Snayers, Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert, Theodoor van Thulden, Jan Boeckhorst, Peeter Symons, Jacob Peter Gowy and others, who worked after Rubens' modellos. Teniers was also invited to participate in this project and make a picture after Rubens' design. That painting is considered lost.

Teniers married into the famous Brueghel artist family when Anna Brueghel, daughter of Jan Brueghel the Elder, became his wife on 22 July 1637. Rubens, who had been the guardian of Anna Brueghel after her father's death, was a witness at the wedding. Through his marriage Teniers was able to cement a close relationship with Rubens who had been a good friend and frequent collaborator with his wife's father. This is borne out by the fact that at the baptism of the first of the couple's seven children David Teniers III, Rubens' second wife, Hélène Fourment, was the godmother. Around this time Teniers started to gain a reputation as an artist and he received many commissions. The Guild of St George (Oude Voetboog Guild), a local militia in Antwerp, commissioned a group portrait in 1643 (Hermitage Museum).

Teniers was a dean of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1644–1645. When Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria became the Governor General of the Spanish Netherlands in 1647, the Archduke soon became an important patron of Teniers. The success went to the artist's head. He claimed that his grandfather Julian Taisnier, who had moved from Ath (now located in the Walloon province of Hainaut) to Antwerp in the 16th century had been from a family that had been entitled to bear a coat of arms. Teniers started to use this coat of arms consisting of a crouching bear on a field of gold encircled by three green acorns. His brother-in-law Jan Baptist Borrekens reported him and Teniers was prohibited from using the coat of arms.

Court painter in Brussels

Around 1650, Teniers moved to Brussels to formally enter into the service of the Archduke as a "pintor de cámara" (court painter).Matthias Depoorter, ''David Teniers II''
at Baroque in the Southern Netherlands The Archduke asked him to be the keeper of the art gallery he had set up in his palace in Brussels. In that position he succeeded the Antwerp painter Jan van den Hoecke who had earlier worked in Vienna for the Archduke.Le Palais du Coudenberg à Bruxelles: Du château médiéval au site archéologique, Editions Mardaga, 2014, p. 180 . One of Teniers's key tasks in this position was to look after and enlarge the archducal collection. Teniers put together a collection for the art gallery which included his own work and that of other artists, which he selected. He was involved in the purchase of a large number of Italian, and especially Venetian, masterpieces from the confiscated collections of Charles I of England and his Jacobite supporters. One of his most important successes was the acquisition of the major part (about 400 paintings) of the collection owned by James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton, who had been a close associate and favorite of the English King and was, like the King, executed in 1649.David Teniers II, ''Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and the artist in the archducal picture gallery in Brussels''
at Christie's The Conde de Fuensaldaña, then acting as Leopold Wilhelm's lieutenant in the Southern Netherlands, also sent Teniers to England in 1651 to purchase paintings at the Pembroke and presumably other sales. The collection of the Archduke grew to incorporate about 1,300 works, mainly of leading Italian artists such as Raphael, Giorgione, Veronese and Titian (15 works by this artist alone) as well as of famous Northern artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger, Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Jan van Eyck. The collection became the foundation and nucleus of the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.''David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting 19 October 2006 to 21 January 2007''
at the Courtauld Gallery

The Archduke also promoted Teniers's art by giving his compositions to other European rulers as presents. As a result, many of these rulers also became patrons of the artist. The bishop of Ghent Anthonius Triest, the Stadtholder Prince Frederik Hendrik of Orange, Christina, Queen of Sweden, William II, Prince of Orange and Philip IV of Spain were among his patrons. Only King Louis XIV of France does not seem to have liked Teniers's work. According to a story, when presented with a peasant scene by Teniers the French king asked for the 'magots' (baboons) to be removed from his sight as soon as possible.

Teniers bought a house close to the Brussels court and was promoted in 1655 to 'camerdiender' or 'ayuda de cámara' (chamberlain) by the Archduke. It was most unusual for a painter to serve as chamberlain at the Spanish court. In fact, there was only one other case, which dates from the same time: that of Diego Velázquez, whose aim was also to be elevated to the nobility.Teresa Posada Kubissa, ''Review of Hans Vlieghe, David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690). A Biography (Pictura Nova. Studies in 16th- and 17th-Century Flemish Painting and Drawing, XVI). Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2011. 214 pp, 86 b&w illus. .''] at historians of Netherlandish art Not long after the Archduke resigned from his position as Governor General of the Spanish Netherlands and returned to Vienna with his large art collection. A Flemish priest, who was also a gifted still life painter, Jan Anton van der Baren, moved with Leopold Wilhelm from Brussels to Vienna where he was the successor of Teniers as the director of the archducal gallery in Vienna.A. Hajdeski, ''Die Niederländer in Wien''
Oud-Holland 25 (1907), p. 9–26; p. 14–19 . The new Governor General of the Spanish Netherlands, Don Juan of Austria continued the support for the artist that he had enjoyed from his predecessor the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. The early Flemish biographer Cornelis de Bie reports in his ''Het Gulden Cabinet'' published in 1662 that Don Juan was an amateur artist who regularly asked Teniers to give him instructions in art. Don Juan was so taken by Teniers that he even drew a portrait of Teniers son.

Teniers's wife died on 11 May 1656. On 21 October of the same year, the artist remarried. His second wife was Isabella de Fren, the 32-year-old daughter of Andries de Fren, secretary of the Council of Brabant. It has been suggested that Teniers's main motive for marrying the 'spinster' was her rather elevated position in society. His second wife also brought him a large dowry.F. P. Dreher, 'The Artist as Seigneur: Chateaux and Their Proprietors in the Work of David Teniers II', in: The Art Bulletin, vol. 60, no. 4 (Dec. 1978), pp. 682–703. The couple had four children, two sons and two daughters. His second wife's attitude to Teniers's children from his first marriage would later divide the family in legal battles. Teniers petitioned the king of Spain to be admitted to the aristocracy but gave up when the condition imposed was that he should give up painting for money.

In 1660, Teniers's ''Theatrum Pictorium'' was published in Brussels. When Don Juan of Austria ended his term as Governor General of the Spanish Netherlands in January 1659, Teniers appears to have withdrawn from active court duty. He purchased from the husband of Hélène Fourment, the widow of Rubens, a country estate called the 'Drij Toren' ('Three towers') located in Perk, in the environs of Brussels and Vilvoorde. Teniers did not cut his links with Antwerp while living and working in Brussels. Teniers maintained close contacts with artists as well as the influential art dealers in Antwerp. In particular; the firm of Matthijs Musson was instrumental in building Teniers's international reputation.

At the behest of his Antwerp colleagues of the Guild of Saint Luke, Teniers became the driving force behind the foundation of the academy in Antwerp, only the second of such type of institution in Europe after the one in Paris. The artist used his connections and sent his son David to Madrid to assist in the negotiation to successfully obtain the required licence from the Spanish king. This involved Teniers's son presenting a very expensive golden watch to one of the courtiers who could influence the Spanish king's decision on the matter. As soon as he received the royal charter creating the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Teniers travelled with it from Brussels to Antwerp and celebrated the accomplishment with a big banquet in the Schilderskamer of the Guild of St. Luke. When in 1674 the existence of the academy was threatened, he again used his influence at the Spanish court to save the institution.

As a court painter, Teniers was not required to become member of a local guild. Nevertheless, he became a member of the Brussels Guild of Saint Luke in 1675. In his later years, Teniers was also active as an art dealer and he organised art auctions. This brought him into conflict with his fellow artists who started proceedings to prohibit him from holding an auction in 1683. Teniers argued that he needed the proceeds of the auction because his children were suing him for their mother's part of her estate. The matter was finally settled between the parties themselves. In his final years, he lost his second wife and was involved in further lawsuits over her estate with the two surviving children of his second wife. There is evidence that in these years he suffered a decline in his prosperity and that his output was diminished.David Teniers, in: ''Flemish Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art'', Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984, p. 255–268.

On 25 April 1690, David Teniers died in Brussels.

His pupils included his son David, Ferdinand Apshoven the Younger, Thomas van Apshoven, Jan de Froey, Aert Maes, Abraham Teniers, and Aert van Waes. Gillis van Tilborgh is also presumed to have studied under Teniers.

Work

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. He was extremely versatile and tried his hand at all the genres then practised in Flanders including history, genre, landscape, portrait and still life.

Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene and scenes with alchemists and physicians. He also painted many religious scenes among which stand out his many compositions treating the subjects of the ''Temptation of St Anthony'' and hermit saints in grottoes or deserts.

Evolution

Teniers's early works show the influence of Adam Elsheimer. This influence was transmitted to him through his father, who had studied under Elsheimer in Rome and is regarded as a follower of Elsheimer. Elsheimer was mainly known for his small cabinet paintings characterised by their innovative treatment of landscape and light effects.

Another major influence on David Teniers the Younger's early work was the work of the Flemish painter Adriaen Brouwer. 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.Ingrid A. Cartwright, ''Hoe schilder hoe wilder: Dissolute Self-Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Art'', Advisors: Wheelock, Arthur, PhD, 2007 Dissertation, University of Maryland University of Maryland (College Park, Md.), p. 8 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.Karolien De Clippel, ''Facetten van de Vlaamse genreschilderkunst in de zeventiende eeuw''
in: Vlaanderen. Jaargang 56(2007), pp. 215–219 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 later works such as his ''Flemish kermesse'' (1652, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels) breathe an idyllic Arcadian spirit. The peasant characters have lost their ungainly appearance and people from the higher social classes are now mixed in with the common people. The artist's new status as court painter of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm from 1651 may have contributed to this 'gentrification' of his work. This type of rural scene became very popular. In many of Teniers's late paintings, the excitement of his earlier peasant feasts is gradually replaced by tranquil scenes populated with only a few human figures. In this later period Teniers also adopted a more painterly and looser style.David Teniers (II), ''A cobbler in his workshop''
at Sphinx Fine Art

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'. Teniers did not design any Teniers tapestries himself. Only a few of these tapestries can be directly linked to works by Teniers. Teniers tapestries were particularly popular from the last third of the 17th century and well into the 18th century. The Teniers tapestries were woven by many Brussels weavers and also in other centers such as Lille, Oudenaarde, Beauvais and Madrid.

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.David Teniers II, '' Landscape with a Drover and his Herd by a River''
at Sphinx Fine Art

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.David Teniers II, ''A pastoral landscape with a washerwoman and a herdsman with cattle and sheep''
at Christie's The landscapes themselves were a combination of fantasy and reality. The Arcadian spirit was conveyed through stock motifs such as cattle and sheep, bridges and classical ruins on a hill as well as through the general tonality and style of these works.

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.

Gallery paintings

Teniers painted 10 paintings representing the collection of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels. Of these only three are dated. Nine are painted on canvas and one on copper. The paintings are believed to depict a fictitious space rather than the actual location of the Archduke's collection in his Brussels palace. The paintings shown in them, however, are known to have formed part of the archducal collection.David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690), ''Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and the artist on his left in the archducal picture gallery in Brussels''
at Sotheby's

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">Jan van Kessel the Elder">ccessed ...