Adriaen Brouwer - The Smokers [c.1636]

Adriaen Brouwer - The Smokers [c.1636], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Adriaen Brouwer (Flemish, Oudenaarde, 1605/6 - Antwerp, 1638), who specialised in tavern and low-life scenes, worked in Haarlem and Amsterdam and spent the last seven or eight years of his brief life in Antwerp. According to tradition, the present painting represents the artist and his friends drinking and smoking. Comparison with portraits of artists such as those in Van Dyck's Iconographie suggests that the foreground figure blowing smoke rings may be Brouwer himself, the man to the right of him, the painter Jan Cossiers, and the man at the right filling his pipe, the painter Jan Davidsz. de Heem. The picture was probably executed in Antwerp about 1636. It may have been among the seventeen paintings by Brouwer listed in the inventory of Rubens' collection. In the nineteenth century it was in the Steengracht collection in The Hague where it aroused the enthusiasm of the French critic Thoré-Burger.

[Oil on wood, 46.4 x 36.8 cm]

Adriaen Brouwer - Tavern Scene [c.1635]

Adriaen Brouwer - Tavern Scene [c.1635], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Adriaen Brouwer (Oudenaarde, 1605 – Antwerp, January 1638) was a Flemish genre painter active in Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century. He died at the early age of 32 in Antwerp, where he was first buried in a common grave, but, upon instigation of the members of the guild, was reburied on February 1, 1638 in the church of the Carmelites. This work, which is signed on the top step below the woman's skirt, is one of his largest and liveliest peasant pictures. He was greatly admired by contemporary artists for his skill as a painter, and both Rembrandt and Rubens collected his work.

[Oil on oak, 48 x 67 cm]