Tavern Scene with Pipesmokers
Artist/Maker
DatesMade: Made c. 1635
Material / Technique
Dimensionsh x w x d: Mått 41,1 x 61,3 x 1 cm h x w x d: Ram 74 x 92 x 10 cm
Inventory numberNM 653
AcqusitionTransferred 1865 Kongl. Museum
Other titlesTitle (sv): Värdshusscen med piprökare Title (en): Tavern Scene with Pipesmokers Title (fr): Scène de taverne avec fumeurs de pipe
DescriptionCatalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 203: Technical notes: The painting’s support is a slightly convex oak panel (±0.8 cm thick) constructed of a single radial board with horizontal grain. Vertical grooves, c. 0.4–0.6 cm deep, have been cut into the panel along the left and right edges on the verso, and wood strips with a rounded profile, c. 3.5 cm wide, have been inserted. Thin strips of wood veneer, c. 0.2 cm thick, have been applied to the top and bottom bevelled edges. Dendrochronological examination and analysis have determined a felling date for the tree between c. 1592 and 1608. The wood originates from the region of Western Germany/the Netherlands. Under the assumption of a median of 17 sapwood rings and a minimum of 2 years for seasoning of the wood, the most plausible date for use of the panel would be 1604 or later. The verso of the support bears the brand of the coat of arms of the city of Antwerp (two outspread hands above a stylized city wall with three towers) and the monogram “MV” . On the verso is the seal of a former owner, King Adolf Fredrik, as Prince-Bishop of Lübeck (1727–1750). The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1868, 1926, 1972 and 1992. Provenance: Antoine la Roque, Paris; acquired at (sale, Paris, 1745, no. 31 or no. 36?) through picture dealer Edmé-François Gersaint by Carl Gustaf Tessin buying for Adolf Fredrik; Adolf Fredrik 1771, no. 87; purchased 1771 by Gustav III from his father’s estate; Gustav III 1792, no. 156 (as David Teniers II); KM 1795, no. 116. Exhibited: Stockholm 1977/1978: no. 95; Brussels, 1980, no. 193; Karlsruhe 2005/2006, no. 11; Stockholm 2010, no. 100. Bibiliography: Gersaint 1745, no. 31 or no. 36?; NM Cat. 1867, p. 47; Sander I, pp. 11, 60 no. 118, 74 no. 39; Sander II, p. 116 no. 156; Göthe 1887, p. 258; Göthe 1893, pp. 315–316; Granberg 1911–1913, II, p. 19 no. 86; Granberg 1911–1913, III, pl. 28; Granberg 1929–31, III, p. 23 no. 156; NM Cat. 1958, p. 195; Edman 1963, p .9, fig. 15; Martin 1980, fig. 5; New York and Maastricht 1982 (intro. and cat. by M. Klinge), p. 20, fig. 13; Dijon 1982/1983, p. 199, fig. 199; NM Cat. 1990, p. 347; Bjurström 1992, p. 49. In the foreground on the left a group of figures, three simply dressed young men and an old peasant, smoking clay pipes and drinking, are gathered in a dark tavern around a make-shift table made from a barrel. The artist depicts his smokers in different stages of their enjoyment, from the filling of the pipe with tobacco, to the lighting up and the climax of intoxication, the inhaling and exhaling of smoke. The standing young man in the centre foreground leans over the table and looks straight at the viewer as he fills his clay pipe from a tobacco wrapper. Before him, a seated young man props one foot on a block and takes his pipe from his mouth he grabs the handle of his beer mug. He tilts his head back and studiously emits a trail of smoke. At the back of this group, a seated old peasant calmly lights his pipe, while a young man on the right turns away from the table as he exhales. Straws and a brazier of hot coals are at hand for lighting up. The artist has taken considerable pains over the depiction of the wisps of smoke, clearly delighted by the effect of smoke streaming elegantly through the nostrils of his smokers. A second group of low-life figures is shown smoking, drinking and warming themselves by the fire in the background on the right. Light shines on a large ceramic jug on the floor in front of the seated young man on the left and on the right are a chamber pot, a pair of slippers and some empty mussel shells. The new subject of smokers, first introduced as a theme in the visual arts by Dutch-born artist Adriaen Brouwer in the late 1620s, was one of Teniers’ favourites and occupied him throughout his career (see also no. 204). Tobacco was introduced into the Netherlands by ships’ crews as early as the 1580s, but the custom of smoking, still a novelty in Teniers’ time, was considered a controversial and socially deviant activity in the 17th century.1 “Veeltijdts wat nieuws, selden wat goets” (“Often something new, seldom anything good”) was how Roemer Visscher summed up many people’s suspicion of the new stimulant in 1614.2 Images of smokers in the 17th century evoked various associations, such as the sense of taste in representations of the Five Senses. However, as suggested by Renger (1986) and Klinge (1991), smoking scenes by Brouwer and Teniers undoubtedly had a moralizing and didactic intent. Pictures of low-life types in tobacco dens, so-called tabagies, like the closely related tavern scenes with drinkers, satirized the immoderate pursuit of sensual gratification. Short-stemmed, unpolished pipes like the one conspicuously placed on the floor in the left foreground of this painting, of a kind typically smoked by sailors, were closely associated with the lower classes and the socially deviant.3 The large ceramic jug placed on the floor in front of the principal groups of smokers on the left probably alludes to drunkenness and the sin of Gula, gluttony or intemperance, one of the traditional Seven Deadly Sins. Smoking was also treated as a vanitas theme, based on the common metaphor that equated the transience of human life with the evanescence of smoke.4 And just as smoke was a common metaphor for the transience of human life, so the human body was associated in the 17th century with odour and excrement. The chamberpot in the right foreground, a frequently occurring motif in tavern scenes by Teniers, is thus probably a vanitas motif, alluding to the popular saying, “Dit lijf, wat ist, als stanck en mist?” (“This body, what is it but stench and shit?”).5 The pair of slippers may allude to another saying, “De schaamschoenen uittrekken”, in the sense to abandon all honour,6 but, as tobacco was smoked as an aphrodisiac, they could also have erotic associations, pointing to unfaithfulness as a possible consequence of drunkenness. 7 Gaskell has discussed the place of tobacco in the pictorial – and literary – language of festive comedy: tobacco was used for pleasure most conspicuously by social groups from which members of the dominant urban middle class were anxious to dissociate themselves, and the appropriate treatment of the lower orders in literature and art was conventionally comic.8 In Brouwer’s smoking and drinking scenes, uncouth peasants thus exemplify the comic and undignified consequences of intemperance.9 Until the end of the 1630s, Teniers followed Brouwer’s style closely in his many indoor tavern scenes, done in a rather monochrome tonality.10 He adopted Brouwer’s uncouth types, as he did the placing of these figures in half dark, smoky spaces. In the present painting a figure in the background on the right stands with his back to the large hearth, a motif introduced by Brouwer and endlessly varied by Teniers. A drawing above the hearth shows the head of a peasant in profile, whose caricaturized physiognomy resembles those of the tavern habitués gathered in front of the fire, another motif frequently employed by Brouwer, presumably used to draw attention to the low-life milieu. Even when he leans closely on Brouwer, however, the personal qualities of Teniers’ style are already clearly recognizable in a mature early work such as this. From the beginning the artist was inventive in his treatment and characterisation of favoured types, who frequently show surprising individuality, as borne out by the astute observation of the facial expressions and body language of the smokers in the present work.11 His figures already show a typical introversion and lack of affect, quite different from Brouwer’s expressive directness, he seems to focus mostly on the calm, befogged mood of his protagonists. Klinge (1980, 2005/2006) dated the present picture around 1635, based on its stylistic resemblance to the artist’s Peasants Celebrating Twelfth Night of that year in Washington (The National Gallery), which depicts peasants drinking in a tavern.12 The fact that the support of the present painting bears the monogram of the Antwerp panel-maker Michiel Vrient – a frequent supplier to Rubens and Brouwer – who died in 1637 (see Technical Notes), supports a date for the painting in the mid-1630s.13 Both works, in which the predominantly monochrome tonality is relieved by vivid colours, blue and yellow, for the principal figures only, exemplify the stylistic maturity of Teniers’ early Antwerp period. The handling of space and the composition of the present work demonstrate the artistic progress made by the artist in the short time since his earliest rendering of smokers in a tavern of 1633 in Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 14 – directly inspired by a painting by Brouwer of the same subject formerly in Vienna15 – where a closely related model was used for the smoker exhaling with his head tilted back. Teniers’ work could now stand independently beside that of Brouwer. By contrast with the latter’s animated figure groupings, Teniers seeks greater balance in his composition, his early paintings showing an almost still life approach to the figures and the space. His mastery is apparent also in the precise observation and rendering of all objects, such as the glazed earthenware jug and pot, which reveal a strong feeling for materiality and texture. CF 1 See Amsterdam 1976, no. 7; and Gaskell 1997. 2 Roemer Visscher, Sinne-poppen, Amsterdam 1614, p. 132. 3 See Gaskell 1997, p. 77. 4 Cf. Psalm 102:3: “For my days are consumed like smoke”. An engraving by Salomon Saverij after a painting of an elegant couple by Pieter Quast in which the man is rather languidly enjoying his pipe, carries the inscription “om tytverdrijff” (Wasting time); for which see Amsterdam 1997, no. 46. 5 Cf. Amsterdam 1976, p. 56 and n. 7. Tavern scenes by Brouwer and Teniers frequently included figures throwing up, urinating against a wall, or even straightening their clothes after having defecated, for example, Brouwer’s, The Smoker, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, on loan to The Hague, Mauritshuis. 6 See Van Dale 1961, p. 1741, cited by Klinge in Karlsruhe 2005, p. 112 no. 11. 7 The shoe was sometimes treated as an image of women, as in the contemporary saying: “One should not stick one’s feet in another man’s shoes” (“Men moet zijn voeten niet in eens anders schoenen steken”), that is, one must not be unfaithful; see Amsterdam 1976, p. 259 no. 68. And a woman who had been another man’s mistress was referred to as “iemands oude schoen”, see De Jongh 1968–1969, p. 37; Amsterdam 1976, p. 259 no. 68. 8 Gaskell 1997 (as in n. 1). 9 According to Cornelis de Bie (1661), Brouwer’s first biographer, the artist knew how to “present the absurd folly of this world to one and all under the guise of mocking words and manners”, and further on, “Here one sees a peasant vomiting in his drunkeness [...] There a seaman with a tankard in his fist [...] Over there an odd fellow is filling his pipe”, see De Bie 1661, pp. 91, 94. 10 There is documentary evidence that in this period Teniers made copies of Brouwer’s work for the Antwerp art trade. Thus, in 1636 the prominent art dealer Chrysostoom van Immerseel paid Teniers for painting “eene Drollerye naer Brauwer”; for which see Denucé 1934, III, p. 99. 11 Noting a resemblance between the portrait-like features of the standing young man in a yellow coat in NM 653, who makes direct eye-contact with the viewer, and Brouwer’s purported self-portrait in The Smokers of c. 1635 in New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Klinge suggested that this, too, is probably a portrait of Brouwer. In her opinion, the painting seems “almost seems like an answer to Brouwer’s picture of himself and his friends...”; see Brussels 1980, no. 193; New York/Maastricht 1982, p. 20; and Karlsruhe 2005, no. 11. The New York Smokers, in which Brouwer cast himself and his friends, including Dutch still life painter Jan Davidsz. de Heem, in the stock roles of characters familiar from his own works, inspired Teniers to paint his own version of the subject in a picture now in Los Angeles (County Museum of Art), of which there is a copy in Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. no. 1331). However, given Teniers II’s “genre-like” treatment of the subject in NM 653, the identification of this figure must remain tentative. 12 Oil on wood, 47.2 x 69.9 cm, signed and dated 1635, Washington, National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, inv. no.1972.10.1, for which see Liedtke in Bauman and Liedtke 1992, p. 278 f. The figure of the old peasant in NM 653, who calmly lights his pipe, his face partly shaded by a hood, recurs in a painting of the same subject in Madrid (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum), which Klinge dates c. 1637. 13 On Vrient, see Van Damme 1990, pp. 223–226; and Wadum 1998. Vrient’s monogram can be found on other panels by Teniers II, for example, the Budapest At the Village Doctor’s, signed and dated 1636, for which see Ember and Urbach 2000, p. 163. 14 Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, inv. no. 5043; see Antwerp 1990, no. 1. The same figure as the smoker in the left foreground of NM 653 was repeated, with slight variation (he holds a pipe in his left hand, a glass in his right), in a signed painting by Teniers that was on the art market in New York in 1989 (sale, New York, Christie’s, 11 January 1989, lot 158). Cf. Brouwer’s Smoker, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, on loan to The Hague, Mauritshuis; and another in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, see Von Bode, fig. 3. 15 Formerly Vienna, Coll. M. Kellner, see Von Bode 1924,[End]
Exhibited
Collection
TechniquePainting
Object category
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