ATTRIBUTED TO DAVID TENIERS THE YOUNGER | Study of a man in a hat, playing a flute

Irregularly cut out around the figure, and inset into a backing sheet. Remains of another old backing on reverse of sheet. Some foxing and surface dirt.
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While it is rare for Teniers to work up his black chalk figure studies with grey wash and white heightening, the figure and facial type, the assured angularity of the delineation of forms, and the very regular diagonal hatching are all features found in many of his drawings.  Interestingly, flautists are rather rare in the artist's paintings: in his many scenes of peasant merrymaking, the music is almost always provided by a bagpiper, but that said, figures of flautists, very similar to this one, do appear in two paintings of The Prodigal Son, one in the Louvre and the other in Minneapolis.^{1 1.}  David Teniers the Younger. Paintings . Drawings, exhib. cat., Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1991, no. 37 and fig. 37a