David Teniers the Younger Antwerp 1610 - 1690 Brussels

Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, 22 January 2004, lot 35;
Acquired subsequently by the present collector. 

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a single piece of oak, bevelled on three sides, which has clearly always remained perfectly flat. The restoration is quite recent, and there is minimal retouching, almost entirely at the edges or in tiny cosmetic touches, mainly in lighter areas such as the foreground floor and the wall and oven roof on the left. The drapery of the girl has a few minute surface touches, as has the white cloth behind her. There is some retouching in the top right corner, where there may have been a short scratch, one or two also at the end of the plank above the oven, and two rather broader retouchings along the base edge, one beneath the small pot at left centre and the other in the right base corner beyond the signature. These are insignificant cosmetic touches and the condition is remarkably good. The only slightly thinner place is in the head of the old man where there is also a dark mark by the nose. Darker areas and especially browns are always naturally thinner and less impasted, but this painting is exceedingly well preserved overall. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This picture, painted in Antwerp in the mid-1640s, is a good example from Teniers' early maturity.  He had in the preceding decade been influenced by the lively brushwork and comic sense of Adriaen Brouwer, who had returned to Antwerp from Haarlem, and by the barn and scullery interiors of the Rotterdam brothers Cornelis and Herman Saftleven, with their interest in still life elements in the foreground, and in particular in their different surface textures and ways of absorbing and reflecting light. By the mid-1640s however Teniers had transformed these influences into a personal and immediately identifiable style. Here he shows us a scurrilous piece of domestic drama, since it would appear that the old woman descending the steps in the background has just caught her bearded husband in the act of canoodling with the nubile scullery maid, vulnerable while her hands are engaged in cleaning a cooking pot with a handful of straw.

We are grateful to Frau Margret Klinge for confirming the attribution and for dating this picture to Teniers' Antwerp period, circa 1644-45.