RKD STUDIES

1640-1660; canvas, oil paint 112,2 x 169,2 cm
Monogrammed, bottom centre left: DTF (DT in monogram)

PROVENANCE
There are two possibilities before the Insurance list of 1804:
(A) it is one of two large pictures by Teniers that were in Desenfans’ collection until at least 1794; or (B) it is the picture that Bourgeois bought in 1801. Insurance 1804 mentions three large pictures, probably DPG76, DPG95 and DPG299.¹
(A) ?Claude-Florentin Sollier sale, Paris, Rémy, Sollier, 3 April 1781 (Lugt 3248), lot 50, bt in;² ?Desenfans sale, anonymous auction house, 8 April 1786 (Lugt 4022), lot 169, sold or bt in, £315.0;³ ?Desenfans sale, anonymous auction house, 8 June 1786 (Lugt 4059a), lot 241, transaction unknown;⁴ ?Desenfans sale, Christie’s, 17 July 1786 (Lugt 4071), lot 39, withdrawn;⁵ ?Evening Mail inventory 1790–91 (in the Drawing Room: Teniers, ‘A Landscape with Figures’ and ‘A Ditto with cattle and figures’); ?List of Pictures to be sold (370 nos), early 1790s;⁶ ?Charles-Alexandre de Calonne and Desenfans private contract sale, Great Rooms (late Cox's Museum), Spring Gardens, 12 May ff. 1794 (not in Lugt), lot 14 (Teniers; Landscape, with his castle 7 ft. by 5 ft. on canvas), transaction unknown; same data, but 16 June 1794 (Lugt 5226), transaction unknown.
(B) ?Charles-Louis Merle de Beauchamp, Comte de Merle, sale, Christie’s, 30 April 1785 (Lugt 3872), lot 57 (‘A landscape with a view of Teniers’s, Chateaux [sic] in the distance, the figures touched with amazing spirit of his true silvery and harmonious tone of coloring’), bt Simpson, 190 gs; John Purling sale, White, London, 17 Feb. 1801 (Lugt 6199), lot 106, bt Bourgeois; £178.10.⁷
Insurance 1804, no. 114 (‘A Large Landscape – Teniers . £300’);⁸ Bourgeois, 1807–11; Bourgeois Bequest, 1811; Britton 1813, p. 23, no. 224 (‘Drawing Room / no. 12, Portraits of the Painter, his Wife & Gardner, in large Landscape - with cottages &c (comp: to 10 [= DPG76]) C[anvas] Teniers’; 5'2" × 6'10").

REFERENCES
Cat. 1817, p. 8, no. 115 (‘SECOND ROOM – West Side; A Landscape, with Portraits of Teniers and his Wife; Teniers’); Haydon 1817, p. 380, no. 115;⁹ Cat. 1820, p. 8, no. 115; Patmore 1824b, pp. 33–4, no. 123;¹⁰ Cat. 1830, p. 8, no. 139; Jameson 1842, ii, p. 465, no. 139;¹¹ Ruskin 1843, pt ii, sec. iv, ch. iv (Of the Foreground), pp. 313–14;¹² Bentley’s 1851, p. 347;¹³ Denning 1858, no. 139 (‘portraits of Teniers himself and his wife, his wife’s page and his gardener […] his Chateau at Perk’); Denning 1859, no. 139 (‘It is a fine landscape’); Sparkes 1876, p. 173, no. 139; Richter & Sparkes 1880, pp. 163–4, no. 139 (D. Teniers II; ‘The gentleman represented in this picture is not Teniers himself’); Richter & Sparkes 1892 and 1905, p. 24, no. 95; Thompson 1910–12, iii (1912), fig. 11; Cook 1914, pp. 56–7, no. 95; Cook 1926, p. 54; Hennus 1936, pp. 169 (fig.), 170;¹⁴ Cat. 1953, p. 39 (David Teniers II); Morawińska 1974, p. 42, no. 29; Dreher 1978, pp. 697–8 (fig. 12); Murray 1980a, p. 126; Murray 1980b, p. 28; Waterfield, Plender & Spring 1995b; Beresford 1998, pp. 230–31; Buvelot, Hilaire & Zeder 1998, p. 213, under no. 58 (Related works, no. 3a) [5]; White 2007, p. 331, under no. 101 (Related works, no. 6) [9]; Jonker & Bergvelt 2016, pp. 256–7, 266; RKD, no. 230512: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/230512 (May 30, 2018).

DPG95
David Teniers (II)
Castle and its proprietors, c. 1640-1660
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG95

1
David Teniers (II)
View of château Drij Toren in harvest time, c. 1660-1665
Boughton House (Northamptonshire), Bowhill House (estate), Montagu House (Bloomsbury), private collection Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry

EXHIBITIONS
Aberystwyth 1947, p. 9, no. 16 (M. Ellis; David Teniers II); London 1953–4, p. 112, no. 405 (as David Teniers II); London 1995, pp. 20 (fig.), 39–40, no. 5 (as David Teniers II; G. Waterfield, S. Plender and M. Spring); Bath 1999, n.p., no. 11 (A. Sumner); Madrid/Bilbao 1999, pp. 120–21, no. 26 (I. Dejardin); Karlsruhe 2005–6, pp. 216–17, no. 60 (M. Klinge; c. 1650).

TECHNICAL NOTES
Plain-weave linen canvas. Grey priming. The shadows are thinly painted. The blue pigment used in much of the sky is smalt, whereas the costume contains the more expensive blue pigment azurite. There are some pentimenti around the group of figures: the heads have been lowered slightly, the arm of the bearded figure has been altered and the feet and skirt have been moved a little. Glue-paste lined; the original tacking margins have been cut off. The lining is stiff and very taut, which has caused blistering at the bottom edge and in the sky. It was retained during the painting’s most recent treatment, however, because of its strong adhesion to the more delicate original canvas. There are small ‘troughs’ in the paint film, where threads from the original canvas were damaged or pulled out during the previous relining. The sky has a craquelure that has been flattened by lining. The edges of the craquelure overlap in other areas, caused by shrinking of the original canvas during lining. There is some vertical damage and vehicular craquelure, suggesting that the canvas was rolled at some stage. The paint layers are slightly abraded, in particular the trees and parts of the sky. Smalt, used in the sky, has discoloured. The trees and landscape on the right are blanched. These areas contained a yellow lake with an organic brown and chalk. The lake has faded to leave a grey-brown appearance. Previous recorded treatment: 1870, ‘revived’, relined and revarnished; 1948–53, conserved, Dr Hell; 1995, cleaned and restored, S. Plender; technical analysis, University College London, L. Sheldon.

RELATED WORKS
(See also under DPG31, Related works, no. 2)
1) David Teniers II, View of Drij Toren in Harvest Time, signed D.TENIERS, canvas, 144 × 177 cm. Collection of the Duke of Buccleuch, Boughton House, Kettering [1].¹⁵
2) David Teniers II, A View of Het Sterckshof near Antwerp, c. 1646, canvas, 82 × 118 cm. NG, London, NG817 [2].¹⁶
3a) David Teniers II, Gentlefolk near a Moated Castle, signed D.TENIERS.F., c. 1653, canvas, 77 × 110 cm. Musée Fabre, Montpellier, 836-4-61 [3].¹⁷
3b) David Teniers II, Landscape with a Château (recto), c. 1645, graphite (ruled in graphite), 173 × 268 mm. Courtauld Institute of Art, London, D.1952.RW.2035 [4].¹⁸
4) David Teniers II, Landscape with Castle and Gentlefolk, signed D.TENIERS.F, canvas, 160 × 224.5 cm. Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, 59.13 [5].¹⁹
5) David Teniers II, A Family standing in a Landscape with a Moated House in the Background, signed D. TENIERS. F, canvas, 96.9 × 197 cm. Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 404844 [6].²⁰
6) David Teniers II, Fête Champêtre (Village Feast), c. 1650, copper, 69 × 86 cm. Prado, Madrid, P01785 [7].²¹
7) (smaller copy) Monogrammed DTF, canvas, 56 × 82.5 cm. Present whereabouts unknown (Bukowski, Stockholm, 15–17 May 1946, lot 126).

Lent to the RA to be copied in 1847.

In the 1640s–60s Teniers painted many views of country houses and castles; clearly there was a market for them in 17th-century Flanders. DPG95 is typical: it shows a castle near a river, with figures in the foreground. Some of these views depict identifiable buildings, while others appear to be imaginary. Several are of the artist’s own château, Drij Toren, purchased in 1662, such as that at Boughton House (Related works, no. 1) [1]. That picture also includes, in the distance, Het Steen, the château of Rubens, no doubt an example that Teniers wished to follow both socially and artistically. Other recognizable views by Teniers include Het Sterckshof, in the National Gallery (Related works, no. 2) [2].

Others châteaux by Teniers seem to be imaginary, but no doubt had some basis in reality. A picture in Montpellier (Related works, no. 3a) [3], for example, derives from a drawing of an unidentified château (Related works, no. 3b) [4], but it is notable that in the painting the artist has added a bridge and omitted the buildings visible to the right in the drawing. That could be the case for DPG95 as well. Unidentified castles frequently appear in the background of his peasant scenes, for example in DPG31, Gipsies in a Landscape. Interestingly, the composition of the castle is similar, in reverse: high main building, twin round towers in front. Unfortunately it has not proved possible to identify the castle shown in DPG95.

The figures in DPG95 have traditionally been said to be Teniers and his wife, but that seems fanciful. The man in the red cloak and the elderly workman appear in different poses in a number of other works (e.g. Related works, nos 2, 3a, 4, 5) [2-3, 5-6]. The pair also appear in larger groups, as in the Village Feast in the Prado (Related works, no. 6) [7]. The boy and the dogs, too, recur again and again. No doubt they were stock figures. As the paintings vary considerably in size, it does not seem that they were intended to be part of a coherent series.

Interestingly, DPG95 is not the only picture of a castle by Teniers that Desenfans owned: in 1786 he offered a similar picture at auction, probably selling it to Lord Lansdowne in the early 1790s.²²

4
David Teniers (II)
Landscape with château, c. 1645
London (England), Courtauld Institute of Art, inv./cat.nr. D.1952.RW.2035

5
David Teniers (II)
Landscape with castle and gentlefolk, c. 1650-55
Budapest, Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, inv./cat.nr. 59.13

6
David Teniers (II)
Family standing in a landscape with a moated house in the background, c. 1649-1650
Great Britain, private collection The Royal Collection, inv./cat.nr. RCIN 404844

7
David Teniers (II)
Village feast, c. 1650
Madrid (city, Spain), Museo Nacional del Prado, inv./cat.nr. P001785

1640–70 and around 1800; canvas, 130 × 177 cm, including additions of 40 cm at the top, 18 cm at the bottom, and 5 cm at the right (originally c. 72 × 172 cm)
Monogrammed, lower centre left: DT.F
The added pieces are almost certainly by Sir Francis Bourgeois.

PROVENANCE
?J. Bertels of Brussels sale, London (Walsh), 8 April 1775 (Lugt 2393), lot 55 (‘Evening – Farmers pointing to a Man’);²³ Insurance 1804, no. 115 (‘Ditto [= A large landscape] with Cattle – Ditto [= Teniers]. £300’); Bourgeois Bequest, 1811; Britton 1813, p. 23, no. 222 (‘Drawing Room / no. 10, Landscape with three figures & dog in foregrod C[anvas] Teniers’; 5'3" × 6'10").

REFERENCES
Cat. 1817, p. 7, no. 111 (‘SECOND ROOM – West Side; A Landscape, with Figures; Teniers’); Haydon 1817, p. 379, no. 111 (David Teniers II);²⁴ Cat. 1820, p. 7, no. 111 (Teniers); Cat. 1830, p. 7, no. 119; Bentley’s 1851;²⁵ Denning 1858 and 1859, no. 119; Sparkes 1876, p. 173, no. 119 (David Teniers II); Richter & Sparkes 1880, p. 161, no. 119 (David Teniers I; ‘Formerly ascribed to Teniers the Younger’); Richter & Sparkes 1892 and 1905, p. 19, no. 76; Cook 1914, p. 43, no. 76; Cook 1926, pp. 41–2; Cat. 1953, p. 39 (David Teniers I); Murray 1980a, p. 126 (David Teniers II); Murray 1980b, p. 28; Waterfield, Plender & Spring 1995a; Beresford 1998, pp. 230–31; Jonker & Bergvelt 2016, pp. 257–8, 266; RKD, no. 290417: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/290417 (July 3, 2018).

DPG76
and Francis Bourgeois (Sir) David Teniers (II)
Peasants Conversing, a Church in the Background, c. 1640-1800
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG76

EXHIBITIONS
Aberystwyth 1947, p. 10, no. 20 (as David Teniers I; M. Ellis); London, 1953–4, p. 113, no. 409 (as David Teniers I); London 1995, pp. 36–8, no. 4 (as David Teniers II; G. Waterfield, S. Plender and M. Spring); Houston/Louisville 1999–2000, pp. 142–3, no. 43 (D. Shawe-Taylor).

TECHNICAL NOTES
Plain-weave linen canvas with additions. Original canvas a chalk ground with grey priming. Glue-paste lined. There are additions at the top (40 cm wide; made of three pieces of canvas) and bottom (17 cm wide; made of two pieces of canvas), and a thin addition down the right-hand side; only the central canvas is original. There is some weave emphasis as a result of the lining. The additions each have different ground preparations to the main canvas. The craquelure is more pronounced in the upper half of the painting than in the lower part. The paint is worn and abraded in the foreground and parts of the sky, and there is a horizontal band of scrapes in the sky. The greens of the landscape and foliage appear a little discoloured and brown, and the smalt used in parts of the sky has discoloured. Previous recorded treatment: 1870, ‘revived’ and varnished; 1911, relined, Holder; 1949–53, cleaned and restored, Dr Hell; 1994, relined with new stretcher, cleaned and restored (historic additions retained), S. Plender.

RELATED WORKS
1) (preparatory drawing or copy?) David Teniers II, Group of Figures, red chalk, 61 × 71 mm. Private collection, Switzerland (Dobiaschofsky Auktionen, Bern, 5 to 8 Nov. 2014, lot 1115; Phillips Son and Neale, London, 3 Dec. 1997, lot 18) [8].²⁶
2) (whole composition, men and dog in reverse) David Teniers II, Landscape with a Castle on a Hill, monogrammed D.T.F., pencil, 195 × 305 mm. Musee Condé, Chantilly, 921 (photo RKD) [9].²⁷
3) (figure of urinating man) David Teniers II, Landscape. Present whereabouts unknown (Adolphe Schloss collection, Paris; stolen during WWII [Répertoire des biens spoliés, no. 6109]).
4) (man in background not urinating) David Teniers II, Landscape, canvas, 120 × 170 cm. Christiane Kram collection, Oslo, 1967 (photo in DPG76 file).
5) David Teniers II, Peasants at Archery, signed D. TENIERS.F, canvas, 119.4 × 289.6 cm. NG, London, NG5851.²⁸
6) David Teniers II, Winter Landscape, c. 1660, monogrammed DT. F, canvas, 70 × 169 cm. Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Staat 245/246 [10].²⁹

Lent to the RA to be copied in 1840.

The unusually large size of DPG76 made it one of the centrepieces of Bourgeois’ collection. Additions to the original canvas – which must have been painted by Bourgeois – made it a pair with DPG95, Teniers’ A Castle and its Proprietors, which was thought to depict the artist in front of his own home. In the Drawing Room in the Charlotte Street house in 1813 the pictures presented a contrast between peasant and courtly life, a contrast seen in much of Teniers’ œuvre. And the two pictures have many characteristic elements of Teniers’ mature style – a pointing figure, silvery skies, an earthy palette, and a shepherd leaning on his staff in the distant background. A drawing on the London art market (Related works, no. 1) [8] was thought to be Teniers’ first attempt at the central figure grouping, with two men talking and one urinating. The group in the drawing is facing in the opposite direction and with the middle figure with his back to the viewer (instead of walking to the left in the picture); however it is not in Teniers’ usual drawing style, and seems likely to be a copy after a Teniers design, be it in reverse. A more convincing drawing has a similar group of three men, but with a castle rather than a church in the background (Related works, no. 2) [9]. The figure of the urinating man appears in another picture (Related works, no. 3).

If the additions are taken away, the width is more than twice the height [11], an unusual format for a landscape, though not in Teniers’ œuvre (Related works, no. 5); a picture in Mannheim (Related works, no. 6) [10] had later been divided into two more conventional landscape shapes.³⁰

It is unclear when DPG76 entered Bourgeois’ collection. The Evening Mail inventory of 1790–91 mentions ‘A landscape with figures’ and ‘A ditto with cattle and figures’, both by Teniers, in the Drawing Room; elsewhere in the inventory these are called ‘two large pictures’, and they are not in the Teniers Room. They may be DPG76 and DPG95.³¹

8
David Teniers (II)
Three peasants and a dog
Private collection

9
David Teniers (II)
Landscape with a castle on a hill, after 1651
Chantilly (Oise), Musée Condé, inv./cat.nr. 921

10
David Teniers (II)
Winter Landscape, c. 1660
Mannheim, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, inv./cat.nr. Staat 245/246

11
DPG76 without the additions