TREASURES OF AL ANDALUS, OLD MASTERS, FINE ART AND ANTIQUES
Lot 159:
Pair of large oil paintings on copper. Measurements: 150 x 136 cm (framed) and 131 x 116 cm (coppers). Provenance: important private collection, Spain. Son of David Teniers I, in his youth he was a faithful follower of his father’s style and that of Adam Elsheimer, but he soon specialized in genre painting, in line with the tradition of the Netherlands, where the taste for this type of works was greater than in any other European country. In 1638 he entered the Guild of Saint Luke, of which he would become dean, and was soon protected by Antonio Tries, Bishop of Ghent, and later by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, appointed by Philip IV Governor of the States of Flanders. Teniers assisted in the Archduke’s acquisitions and contributed greatly to the formation of his fabulous art collection, acting as its curator. Thanks to this, the painter had the opportunity to meet and study works by different masters, centuries, schools and genres. The cabinet paintings made by Teniers are a valuable tool for locating the works collected by the Archduke, as well as a delight for the senses due to their quality and fidelity to the originals. In them the painter appears together with his protector and his friends, something unusual, and which constitutes a vindication of the dignity of painting similar to the one that would later appear in Las meninas. In 1651 his appointment as court painter caused him to move to Brussels. The previous year he had begun work on the Theatrum Pictoricum, illustrated with two hundred and forty-four etchings of Italian paintings by the most prestigious masters of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, a precursor project of the current illustrated catalogues. When Leopoldo Guillermo left Flanders to occupy the imperial throne, in 1656, this project was interrupted, as well as the functions of the painter at court. However, the arrival of Leopoldo’s successor, don Juan José de Austria -also fond of painting-, led Teniers to commissions similar to the previous ones. Like Rubens and Van Dyck, he was free to work on projects for patrons from other countries and had the admiration of Christina of Sweden, the Duke of York, William II of Orange and Louis II of Condé, without forgetting Philip IV, who owned his works from an early date and supported his project to create the Antwerp Academy, which was finally inaugurated in 1669. His influence reached the 18th century, and it contributed to the rococo taste for the amiable subjects and themes of life and nature, the charm of small things and the grace of things and people. His paintings enriched the collections of the first Bourbons in Spain: fundamentally, that of Isabel de Farnesio. His compositions were copied in tapestries, which adorned the royal sites of Madrid. He put his brushes at the service of a world opposed to the heroic one of Rubens and the masters of history painting. Daily life was the fundamental objective of his indulgence, themes and environments previously considered unworthy of high-ranking artists and which would later be very much to the liking of 19th-century society. This hierarchical distinction is found in Spanish preceptists such as Pacheco and Carducho, who treat with disdain those who consecrate their brushes to such vulgarity. But the citizens of Flanders were not of the same opinion, who liked to see the acts and lives of humble people immortalized with the same richness of color, emotion and poetry as other subjects considered more respectable. Teniers, unlike Adriaen Brouwer, gave a friendly image of the taverns, of the very poor people, of the drunks and smokers that his teacher conveys to us with deeper and more sincere drama. Teniers compensates for these limitations with the freshness of a technique of surprising virtuosity, drinking from the tradition of the beginning of the century, in coexistence with Jan Brueghel the Elder, Frans Francken II and Joost de Momper, to whom he owes the liveliness of the country parties in the open air. free, the kermesses, cabinet paintings and panoramic landscape views. It is appropriate to remember that he married Anna, daughter of Jan Brueghel the Elder and goddaughter of Rubens, which gave him an enviable social level. In his painting cabinets he added a series of innovations, renouncing the allegorical pretexts of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens, to establish an environmental reality and an unquestionable documentary content. Reference bibliography: David Teniers, Jan Brueghel and the cabinets of paintings, cat. exp., Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1992. Peyre, Roger, David Teniers, Paris, Henri Laurens, 1910. renouncing the allegorical pretexts of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens, to fix an environmental reality and an unquestionable documentary content. Reference bibliography: David Teniers, Jan Brueghel and the cabinets of paintings, cat. exp., Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1992. Peyre, Roger, David Teniers, Paris, Henri Laurens, 1910. renouncing the allegorical pretexts of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens, to fix an environmental reality and an unquestionable documentary content. Reference bibliography: David Teniers, Jan Brueghel and the cabinets of paintings, cat. exp., Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1992. Peyre, Roger, David Teniers, Paris, Henri Laurens, 1910.
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