David Teniers the Younger

Collection Warneck;

His sale, M^e Baudoin, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 27-28 May 1926, lot 80.

Son of the painter David Teniers the Elder, David Teniers II, known as the Younger (1610–1690), is known for his innovations in many fields, moving from genre painting to portraits as well as mythological and religious scenes. A member of the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp, he was a court painter and chamberlain to Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm of Habsburg from 1651 and was involved in the foundation of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Antwerp in 1664.

His reputation attracted many European commissions. He turned a realistic but also ironic eye on contemporary working class and peasant life in Flanders. Some of his works focus on the life of taverns and the issue of alcohol. The present painting is a portrait of a middle-aged woman, wearing a pink and white cap that covers her hair and ears. Holding a glass of wine, she looks over her left shoulder, against a uniform brown background.

While the depiction of a lone woman with a glass of wine could represent temptation, weakness or the surrender to pleasure in a Calvinist and moralistic context, Teniers also gives us an intimate scene with a moral or allegorical aspect. This is rather a portrait whose tone oscillates between irony, realism and observation of ordinary working-class life, similar to his Smoker Leaning on a Table (1643, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. 1888) or his Interior, with an Old Woman Peeling Apples (Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum, inv. 72).