Man Smoking in a Tavern

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 31 augustus 2007
technical report: I. Verslype / Z. Benders, RMA, 5 augustus 2008

Conservation

H.H. Mertens, 1961: cleaned, retouched and revarnished
J.J. Susijn, 1974: consolidation of loose paint
H. Kat, 1993: consolidation of loose paint, retouched and revarnished

Provenance

…; collection William Theobald (1795-1850);¹Information kindly provided by Caroline Carr-Whitworth, Curator Art, English Heritage, 2009, who also provided information about the picture’s history at Brodsworth. The house is now owned by English Heritage. his daughter, Georgiana Theobald, and her husband Charles Sabine Augustus Thellusson (?-1885), in the library at Brodsworth Hall, near Doncaster, Yorkshire, as anonymous (‘Figure of a man smoking and two other figures on panel’), 1885;²An Inventory of the Household Effects … Late the Property of C.S.A. Thelluson Esq., Valued for Probate 1885 Dowsett and Woods, at Brodsworth; information kindly provided by Richard Green (York). by descent to his great nephew Charles Grant-Dalton (1884-1952), 1931 (but not included in the inventory made in that year);³A. Thelluson decd. Inventory etc., 1931, at Brodsworth. A note on the cover of the inventory states ‘Everything except pictures’, though six pictures were listed as in the library. Omitted were the Rijksmuseum picture and an equestrian portrait, which is still at Brodsworth; information kindly provided by Richard Green. It is likely the work was sold by Charles Grant-Dalton (1884-1952); no record of the transaction has been found.…; from the dealer Arthur Tooth to P. & D. Colnaghi, London, 1936;⁴Colnaghi records 1894-1939, picture stock books, on loan to Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire. from whom, £ 750, to Isaäc de Bruijn (1872-1953) and his wife Johanna Geertruida de Bruijn-Van der Leeuw (1877-1960), Spiez and Muri, near Bern, 1936; by whom donated to the museum, with a life interest, December 1961; on loan to the Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1963-98; on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2004-11

ObjectNumber: SK-A-4040

Credit line: De Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest, Muri, Switzerland

The artist

Biography

Adriaen Brouwer (Oudenaarde (?) 1603-05 - Antwerp 1638)

The genre and landscape painter, Adriaen Brouwer, or Adriaen de Brouwer, is best documented in the last eight years or so of his life which were spent in Antwerp. He was buried in the Carmelite monastery there on 1 February 1638. Isaac Bullart, in Peintres illustres du Pays Bas of 1682, states that he was thirty-two years old when he died; thus the year of his birth would be 1605 or 1606 (but see further below).⁵I. Bullart, Academie des Sciences et des Arts, contenant les vies, & les éloges historiques des hommes illustres etc., 2 vols., Brussels 1682, p. 488. His engraved portrait by Schelte Adamsz Bolswert (1584/1588-1659) after Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) for The Iconography, modelled probably in the early 1630s, shows the artist in his late twenties or so.⁶S. Turner and C. Depauw, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700, Anthony van Dyck, 7 vols., Rotterdam 2002, II, no. 51; Vey in S.J. Barnes, N. de Poorter, O. Millar and H. Vey, Anthony van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven (Conn.)/London 2004, no. III 146. Bullart also states that he was born in Oudenaarde which would substantiate references in the 1640s⁷In the inscription on the fifth state of the engraved portrait, in note 6, published by Gillis Hendricx. and in 1662⁸C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermartste schilders, architecte, beldtowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuwe, Antwerp s.a. (1662), p. 91. to his being a Fleming, a view corroborated by recent research. It has placed his date of birth between 1603 and 1605, and provides evidence that he moved with his family to Gouda after 1613.⁹Jager et al. in K. Lichtert (ed.), Adriaen Brouwer, Master of Emotions: Between Rubens and Rembrandt, published to accompany the exhibition held at the MOU-Museum van Oudenaarde en de Vlaamse Ardennen, 2018, pp. 40-43.

Brouwer is first heard of in Amsterdam in 1626 when he witnessed a notarial deposition; he may have been living in the house of the deponent, the art dealer Barend van Someren, who was to own drawings by the artist.¹⁰Jager et al. in K. Lichtert (ed.), Adriaen Brouwer, Master of Emotions: Between Rubens and Rembrandt, published to accompany the exhibition held at the MOU-Museum van Oudenaarde en de Vlaamse Ardennen, 2018, pp. 43-44. The following year a play was dedicated to the ‘richly artistic and famous young man, Adriaen Brouwer, painter of Haarlem’ (Den Constrijcken en Wijtberoemden Ionghman, Adriaen Brouwer, Schilder tot Haerlem). Houbraken states that he was apprenticed to Frans Hals (c. 1581-1666) in Haarlem,¹¹P.T.A. Swillens (ed.), De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen door Arnold Houbraken, 3 vols., Maastricht 1943-53, I, p. 251. for which there is no contemporary corroboration; but in fact he became a member also in 1626 of the Haarlem chamber of rhetoric, the Wijngaertrancken, and was to enrol in the city’s guild of St Luke. Paintings by him are confidently dated to around this time.

In the guild accounting year from September 1631 to September 1632, Brouwer was admitted to the Antwerp guild of St Luke.¹²P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, p. 22. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) attested on 4 March 1632 that he had bought a Peasant Dance from Brouwer about a year previously.¹³E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, III, p. 268. His reputation as an artist may have thus preceded him, as also in that year Jan Baptist Dandoy (active 1631-38) was enrolled as a pupil of Brouwer,¹⁴P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, p. 29. and his work was being copied as early as 1632.¹⁵E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, VII, p. 439.

But by October 1632 he was in debt; an inventory of his possessions shows his exiguous circumstances.¹⁶E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, III, pp. 313-14. In February a year later, he is recorded as incarcerated in the Antwerp Kasteel in which he may have remained until the spring of the following year.¹⁷E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, III, pp. 333, 356. In May 1634 he became a lodger with the engraver Paulus Pontius (1603-1658) in the Everdijstraat.¹⁸E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, III, p. 431; F.J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, 3 vols., Antwerp 1883, pp. 861-62. In 1634/35, with Pontius, he joined the rederijkerkammer, De Blom Violiere, and renewed his membership the next year.¹⁹P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, pp. 66, 78. No mortuary fee was paid to the guild, so he may have died impoverished or more likely without relatives in Antwerp.

Renger has estimated Brouwer’s extant oeuvre at some sixty paintings; none is dated.²⁰K. Renger, Adriaen Brouwer und das niederländische Bauerngenre 1600-1660, Munich 1986, p. 48, and note 14, pp. 122-23. The rubric beneath his portrait in Van Dyck’s Iconography described him as ‘Gryllorum Pictor’ (painter of comic figures).²¹The fourth and fifth states of this print, see S. Turner and C. Depauw, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700, Anthony van Dyck, 7 vols., Rotterdam 2002, II, no. 51. His paintings were collected by both Rubens²²E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, IV, p. 299, nos. 272-280 of the Specification. and Rembrandt van Rijn (1609-1669), who also owned drawings by him.²³W. Strauss and M. van der Meulen, The Rembrandt Documents, New York 1979, pp. 349, 355, 371. A further measure of his contemporary reputation may be estimated by a comparison of prices paid for his work with those for other masters; thus Arnold Lunden (d. 1656) paid 400 guilders for a Village Fête as against the 1,000 guilders that Rubens’s masterpiece The Farm at Laeken had cost him.²⁴Lunden was a brother-in-law of Rubens; the inventory, datable 1643/44, giving the cost prices, is known by a copy transcribed by Mols, see E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, V, p. 58; for The Farm at Laeken, see C. White, The later Flemish Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London 2007, no. 58. Campo Weyerman described Brouwer in his Levensbeschryvingen as the ‘Democritus of painters’ (Demokriet der Schilders) – Democrites being traditionally considered the ‘laughing philosopher’, laughing at human folly;²⁵J. Campo Weyerman, De levens-beschrijvingen der nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over de schilder-konst der ouden: Verrijkt met de konterfeytsels der voornamate konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen in koper gesneden door J. Houbraken, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, II, p. 63. anecdotes arising from his scepticism are relayed by his early biographers. Some at least may have had a basis of truth.

REFERENCES
F.J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, 3 vols., Antwerp 1883, pp. 847ff; J.H.W. Unger, ‘Adriaan Brouwer te Haarlem’, Oud Holland 2 (1884), pp. 161-69; G. Knuttel, Adriaen Brouwer: The Master and his Work, The Hague 1962, pp. 9-27; Jager et al. in K. Lichtert (ed.), Adriaen Brouwer, Master of Emotions: Between Rubens and Rembrandt, published to accompany the exhibition held at the MOU-Museum van Oudenaarde en de Vlaamse Ardennen, 2018, pp. 37-44

Entry

This painting exhibits many of the characteristics of Adriaen Brouwer’s style when working in Antwerp. It has been generally accepted as by him²⁶For instance by G. Knuttel, Adriaen Brouwer: The Master and his Work, The Hague 1962, pp. 140-41 and N. van Hout, Flemish Masters: Rubens, Van Dyck Jordaens and their Contemporaries, Amsterdam/Zwolle 2002, pp. 42-44. and praised as such by Klinge,²⁷M. Klinge, Adriaen Brouwer, David Teniers the Younger: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings, exh. cat. New York/Maastricht (Noortman & Brod Ltd) 1982, p. 13. discussed at length by Broos,²⁸B. Broos, Meesterwerken in het Mauritshuis, Den Haag 1987, pp. 85-88. and included in the Oudenaarde exhibition of 2018. However, the partial cleaning, concentrating on the shoulder and shirt of the main figure, may mask weaknesses, for instance, in the alignment of the doorway, the clumsy execution of the man emerging from it, the poorly executed left hand of the smoker and the ill-defined scraps on the ground. The closest comparison is with the Two Peasants Smoking in the Munich Alte Pinakothek,²⁹K. Renger with C. Denk, Flämische Malerei des Barock in der Alten Pinakothek, Munich/Cologne 2002, p. 69, no. 2095. but the handling seems less delicate. This and the weaknesses already noted, raise the question of the authenticity of the Rijksmuseum painting: whether it is the work of a follower should at least be borne in mind. Further weight to this caveat is provided by the dendrochronological analysis of the single-member support which is of oak from the Baltic/Polish area; it would have been ready for use from 1634 at the earliest, plausibly from 1640, two years after Brouwer’s death. Thus the attribution to Brouwer is here qualified. Two portraits of smokers by David Teniers II at Stockholm and Madrid , dated by Klinge c. 1635-36 and 1636-37,³⁰M. Klinge and D. Lüdke (eds.), David Teniers der Jüngere 1610-1690: Alltag und Vergnügen in Flandern, exh. cat. Karlsruhe (Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) 2005-06, nos. 11, 12. could derive from a conjectural prime version of the the present painting by Brouwer.

The seated man is smoking tobacco from a clay pipe. The tobacco could have been imported from the Caribbean or more probably came from the locality as would have the pipe.³¹G. Brongers, Nicotiana Tabacum: The History of Tobacco and Tobacco Smoking in the Netherlands, Groningen 1964, p. 31. Already by the end of the previous century, tobacco smoking had become widespread in the Netherlands³²See the remarks by Emanuel van Meteren of 1599, quoted by G. Brongers, Nicotiana Tabacum: The History of Tobacco and Tobacco Smoking in the Netherlands, Groningen 1964, pp. 17-18. and was to elicit varied responses and comments.³³See Bedaux et al. in Tot lering en vermaak: betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1976, under no. 7; I. Gaskell, ‘Tobacco Social Deviance and Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century’, in H. Bock and T.W. Gaehtgens (eds.), Holländische Genremalerei im 17. Jahrhundert: Symposium, Berlin 1984, Berlin 1987, pp. 117-37, esp. pp. 119-20. It seems that Brouwer brought it as a subject from Haarlem to Antwerp. In Haarlem Willem Pietersz Buytewech (1591-1624), for instance, had treated it as an activity of the youth from the prosperous bourgeoisie.³⁴For example the Merry Company in the Szépmüvéstzeti Múzeum, Budapest, see M. van Berge-Gerbaud et al., Willem Buytewech 1591-1624, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1974-75, no. 3. But here is depicted the interior of a tobacco inn and the narcotic effect of smoking,³⁵I. Gaskell, ‘Tobacco Social Deviance and Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century’, in H. Bock and T.W. Gaehtgens (eds.), Holländische Genremalerei im 17. Jahrhundert: Symposium, Berlin 1984, Berlin 1987, pp. 117-37, esp. pp. 121-22. a subject favoured by Brouwer as is suggested by the estate inventory of Gijsbrecht I van der Cryce, an Antwerp innkeeper who died in 1639, which listed ‘… een cleyn schilderyken … van der schilder Brouwer van Toubackdrinckers’.³⁶E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, IV, p. 253.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

J.L. Cleveringa, ‘Catalogus van de schilderijen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 9 (1961), pp. 63-67, esp. p. 63, no. 3 (as by Brouwer); K. Lichtert (ed.), Adriaen Brouwer, Master of Emotions: Between Rubens and Rembrandt, published to accompany the exhibition held at the MOU-Museum van Oudenaarde en de Vlaamse Ardennen, 2018, no. 24 (as by Brouwer)

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 152, no. A 4040 (as by Brouwer)

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'attributed to Adriaen Brouwer, Man Smoking in a Tavern, c. 1635 - c. 1640', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.10079

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