Lot 28
  • 28

David Teniers the Younger

Estimate
150,000 - 200,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • David Teniers the Younger
  • River Landscape with Rainbow
  • signed lower center: D. TENIERS
    incised on the reverse with the panel maker's mark of François de Bout (active 1637-1649)
  • oil on panel

Provenance

Chevalier Le Roque;
His sale, Paris, Gersaint, April 1745;
With Newhouse Galleries, New York;
From whom purchased by Thomas Mellon Evans, New York, in 1959;
His sale, New York, Christie's, 22 May 1998, lot 31;
David Koetser, 1998.

Exhibited

Baltimore 1999, no. 52. 

Literature

J. Smith, A catalogue raisonné..., vol. III, London 1831, p. 271, cat. no. 41;
Baltimore 1999, pp. 124-125, cat. no. 52. 

ENGRAVED:
Jacques-Philippe Le Bas, as 'L'Arc-en-Ciel'

Condition

The following condition report has been provided by Karen Thomas of Thomas Art Conservation LLC., 336 West 37th Street, Suite 830, New York, NY 10018, 212-564-4024, info@thomasartconservation.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This picture is in an excellent state of preservation with no losses or damage. The paint layer is in pristine condition, although ultra-violet illumination reveals minimal restoration glazes limited to areas where dark streaks related to the wood grain interrupt the reading of the cloud formations. The horizontally-grained wood panel support is planar and retains its original verso surface with beveled edges; a panel maker's mark near the center of the back has been identified as that of François de Bout. The varnish is clear and adequately saturates the paints. This picture has no need of conservation intervention and may be enjoyed in its current state.
"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."

Catalogue Note

David Teniers the Younger's paintings became popular through his playful and boisterous peasant interior scenes, as well as his more grandly illustrated representations of collectors’ painting cabinets, notably that of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, under whose patronage he worked beginning in 1647. It was at the beginning of the 1640’s, however, that Teniers began to develop his own pictorial language in the more established genre of landscape painting. It was at around this moment that he focused his attention on the Flemish countryside as a subject itself worthy of his attention, and not merely as a backdrop to his outdoor genre scenes. As he so deftly demonstrates in this panel, Teniers focused his attention on the variegated light of the Flemish countryside as effected by impending weather. Here he includes wispy, dark clouds, with streaking rays of light piercing in from various directions through rain, and a rainbow in the left background. Along with Rubens, Teniers was among the first Flemish seventeenth-century artists to include rainbows in his compositions, not for their allegorical or religious meaning, but rather as another means by which to demonstrate his careful study of nature. Other examples of this include another work from the mid 1640s, The Reaping (The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, inv. no. ET- 2778).1

Though no specific sketch has been discovered related to this picture, a number of rapidly executed pencil studies of trees from this period (fig. 1) provide great insight into the spontaneous representations of foliage and light.

The reverse of the panel bears the initials F/DB (fig. 2), which is the maker-mark of the Antwerp panel producer François de Bout, who became a master in the Antwerp guild of Saint Luke in 1637-8, and who provided Teniers with numerous panel supports during his career. 

1. Copies after the present composition are in private collections in Berlin and Aschaffenburg (RKD entry 44932).