The Gamblers, David Teniers (II), c. 1640 – (David Teniers The Elder) ◄ предишен Следващия ►

Artist: David Teniers The Elder

Дата: 1640

Размер: 45 x 59 cm

Техника: Oil On Panel

Although the status of the signature is uncertain, there is no reason to doubt David Teniers II’s execution of this work. The panel maker has not been identified.10 The Salvator-size11 support is of a single piece of timber from a tree grown in the German Netherlandish region which would have been ready for use from 1552, and more plausibly from 1562. As Klinge has pointed out, the grouping of the main protagonists and the pose of the dice thrower, much favoured by Teniers, was inspired by Adriaen Brouwer’s picture in the Munich Alte Pinakothek.12 That is thought to be a late work;13 as Brouwer died in early 1638, this would suggest that the Rijksmuseum picture was executed after circa 1636/37. Closely related in composition, but with differences in dress, physiognomies and background and with some small variations in poses, is the drawing in the Courtauld Institute Galleries, London, which Klinge has related to a painting of 1648.14 But there are differences too between the drawing and this painting, such that it is legitimate to speculate as to whether the drawing could not also be related to the conception of the Rijksmuseum picture. The handling in the two paintings differs; the latter is likely to date from a few years earlier and to be more contemporary with the Munich Inn Scene of 1643;15 Klinge dates it circa 1640.16 As in the Brouwer, a common theme in Teniers’s gaming pictures is the disparity between the players. In the Rijksmuseum picture it lies in both age and status as it does in the gamers in the Metropolitan Museum Guardroom with the Release of St Peter, which Klinge has dated between 1645 and 1647,17 and in the interior of 1648, already referred to. In the present picture the officer’s winnings seem marginally higher. Klinge observed that the artist eschewed condemnation of gambling as preached by the Catholic Church. She believes that his attitude towards it may have been similar to that of Alfonso X, King of Castile and León (the Wise, 1221-1248) who, she recounts, maintained that gambling was ordained by God as a means of learning to cope with both good and bad fortune.18 Prominent (and unusual) in the foreground is a Westerwald stoneware pitcher, as Klinge has pointed out.19 Gregory Martin, 2022