David Teniers the Younger

Possibly the Bisshop Collection, Rotterdam, before 1771;
Bought by John Hope (1737-1784) and Henry Philip Hope (1774-1839);
Loaned to his brother Thomas Hope (1769-1831), for the Flemish Picture Gallery Duchess Street, London in 1819;
Bequeathed by Henry Philip Hope to his nephew Henry Thomas Hope (1808-1862) in 1839;
By descent to his widow, Anne Adele Hope ;
Bequeathed to her grandson Lord Francis Hope Pelham-Clinton-Hope, later 8th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne (1866-1941);
Ludwig Neumann, 11 Grosvenor Square, London;
By whom sold, London, Christie's, 4 July 1919, lot 19 (to Sulley & Co for £1522.10).

London, British Insitution, 1818, no. 69;
London, South Kensington Museum, 1868;
London, Royal Academy, 1881, no. 61;

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, vol. III, London 1831, pp. 428-9, no. 636;
G. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britian, vol. III, London 1854, p. 119;
R.S. Gowing, Great Historic Galleries of England, vol. IV, London 1884, no. 20;
A. Graves, A Century of Loan Exhibitions 1813-1912, vol. III, London 1914, pp. 1289 and 1297;
D. Watkins and  P. Hewat Jaboor eds., Thomas Hope: Regency Designer, Yale 2008, appendix, p. 504.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a copper panel, which has a few small dents: tiny slightly pointed dents in the corners presumably from misguided nails behind, a little group of small dents near the mid right edge and one or two other faint bends which have not caused any paint loss. An old scratch slanting across the doorway does end with a small damage to the paint surface by the central edge of the door. There is otherwise no accidental loss or damage. The brushwork is beautifully crisp and intact, with liquid touches even into the darks of the background very largely unworn, including the finely shaded tones in the distant figures. One or two places in these heads are rather thinner and there are minor instances of wear occasionally in the shadow under the table for instance and up the dark border of the doorway. The most recent restoration has left small matt surface retouchings sprinkled here and there, including a possible drip from the edge of the table through the older varnish. Possible older retouches seem to be mainly in the varnish in the background, but despite the scattered annoyance of the little matt retouchings (apparently largely unnecessary) the translucency of the painted surface is finely preserved generally throughout, with all the beautifully intact detail. 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 beautifully preserved copper is an exceptional example of Teniers's work from the 1640's, when he was at the height of his powers as an artist.  During this decade Teniers developed his interest in genre to include a series of small coppers and panels such as this, exploring the theme of gambling.  The choice of a guardroom interior is rare in his paintings of this type.

As with many of his interiors of this date Teniers uses a typical L-shaped room format with a foreground scene on the left and a secondary group of figures in a further room back right.  Teniers was a sharp observer of human nature and here the primary focus of the composition is the game of Tric-Trac taking place in the foreground between the older seated man and his young, confident opponent in military dress.  Teniers has captured a moment of high tension in the game as the soldier stands, dice in hand, ready to take his go, while his older opponent stares intently at his face as if willing him to lose.  The serious nature of the competition between the two is emphasised by the direct contrast between their focus and the relaxed and distracted interest of the two observers. In this painting, as in others from the 1640's, Teniers also takes the opportunity offered by the interior setting to explore his interest in still life.  He has taken great care with his depiction of the guardroom accoutrements lower right and with the jug on the floor and the hat hanging on the back of the chair lower left.  This device of the hat on the chair was one he reused a number of times in other gambling scenes of this date such as the celebrated The White Bonnet  and The Red Bonnet, both signed and dated 1644 and now in private collections.¹  This copper must be counted alongside these as one of the very finest of Teniers' works of this type and indeed among the finest achievements of his Antwerp period.

When in the celebrated Hope collection and in its later provenance the present lot was paired with a Soldiers Bourgeois of the same size and date.   Both paintings hung in Thomas Hope's famous gallery at Duchess Street in London, where entrance was permitted by ticket only and through which Hope aimed to influence the tastes and styles of the day (fig.1).  Many of the Dutch and Flemish pictures on display, including the present lot, were on loan from Thomas's younger brother Henry.  Other important paintings from the collection included Jan Steen's The Dancing Couple and Sir Anthony Van Dyck's The Virgin as Intercessor both now in the National Gallery of Art Washington.² At Henry's death his unparalleled art collection, as well as his wealth, was left to his nephew Henry Thomas Hope.  At death his window Adele bequeathed the collection to her grandson Lord Francis Hope to avoid it falling into the hands of her profligate son-in-law the 6th Duke of Newcastle.  Ironically Lord Francis Hope turned out to be just as careless with his wealth and after being declared bankrupt in 1896 he went to court to break his grandmother's entail and finally broke up the magnificent collection in a series of sales in the 1910s. 

1.     See M. Klinge, David Teniers the Younger, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp 1991, pp. 110-117, nos. 32, 33, 34.
2.     See A.K. Wheelock, Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford 1995, pp. 364-9, no. 1942.9.81 and A.K. Wheelock, Flemish Paintings of the Seventeenth Century,Oxford 2005, pp. 75-79, no. 1942.9.88.