- 3
David Teniers the Younger Antwerp 1610 - 1690 Brussels
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Description
- David Teniers the Younger
- A wooded dune landscape with fortune-telling gypsies and an old man with his dog on a path in the foreground, a fortified castle with a church and a bridge near a stream in the background
- signed in monogram lower centre on the rock: DT (in compendium) F.
- oil on canvas
Provenance
Anonymous sale, Paris, Le Roy, 18-19 April 1842 (sold for 3.320 Francs to Mr. Leduc);
Comtesse de Maillé, Paris,
Her deceased sale, Paris, Baudoin/Bellier, 28 February 1921, lot 60 (sold for 18.500 Francs).
Catalogue Note
The extensive view of the countryside in this painting, which employs predominantly bright yellows, browns, and greens, is notable for the fineness of the drawing and for the lightness and freshness with which Teniers captures the filmy foliage of trees and bushes in the late afternoon sunlight. This must derive from precise observation of nature. This work probably dates from the latter part of the 1640s, a period when the artist made many drawings in the countryside around Antwerp, or from the first half of the 1650s.
Gypsies, who were regarded as work-shy and thievish, earning their living by fraud - to which fortune-telling belonged - were frequently painted by Teniers. To the Christian thinking of the time fortune-telling or having one's fortune told was a sin. It was a symbol of man's self-deception, an attempt to interfere with the course upon which God had set him. By contrast with the gypsy's decieving words, the church in the background points to the true faith.
An almost identical version, also signed, but on panel and of smaller measurements, is in the Kunstmuseum, Basel (inv. no. 1111), and shows more of the landscape to the left half of the composition.
Gypsies, who were regarded as work-shy and thievish, earning their living by fraud - to which fortune-telling belonged - were frequently painted by Teniers. To the Christian thinking of the time fortune-telling or having one's fortune told was a sin. It was a symbol of man's self-deception, an attempt to interfere with the course upon which God had set him. By contrast with the gypsy's decieving words, the church in the background points to the true faith.
An almost identical version, also signed, but on panel and of smaller measurements, is in the Kunstmuseum, Basel (inv. no. 1111), and shows more of the landscape to the left half of the composition.