David Teniers the Younger (workshop), animated landscape, oil on panel.

The oil on panel we are presenting can be ascribed, due to its technique and meticulous attention to detail – factors that differentiate it from similar subjects from the Italian and French schools – to the workshop of the Flemish artist David Teniers the Younger (Antwerp 1610-Brussels 1690).

Belonging to a well-known family of painters, his training in the atelier of his father, the famous Teniers the Elder, allowed him to create that synthesis between the manner of Adam Elsheimer and that of the great Rubens, of which our panel bears admirable and evident traces.

If Teniers is indebted to the Frankfurt painter and designer Elsheimer for the constant relationship between the human figure and the landscape, characterised by rounded trees reflected in the clouds as well as for the conscious use of light as a unifying psychological element with an intrinsic and precise psychological value (“Landscape” in the National Gallery in Prague), some suggestion of the Frankfurt lesson can also be found in the way of depicting sheep and cattle, which recalls Philip Peter Roos , otherwise known as Rosa da Tivoli.

To the dense map of landscape models from which Teniers the Younger draws (despite the subjects he favours being bizarre , in full continuity with the authoritative models of Brueghel and Bosch , witches and alchemists , we also find animated landscapes pervaded by a strong esoteric meaning such as the masterpiece known as “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” in the Prado in Madrid ) are added the suggestions of Lucas van Valckenborch and Gillis  van Coninxloo (a forerunner of that animated landscape with a historical, mythological or religious subject, which Teniers will treasure in the sacred animated landscape “Saints Anthony and Paul the Hermit”) as well as a certain proximity to the “figurines” of Frans Francken II (note for example, in our canvas, the kneeling subject).

However, the lesson that this panel bears most trace of is precisely that of the great Rubens (compare, for example, our work with the “landscape with rainbow” in the Wallace Collection in London or with Rubens' “Farm at Laken ” or the “landscape with cows and wild flowers”), that genius from Antwerp who in the last part of his life showed a preference for landscapes and painted daily life in the countryside: an eloquent example is his “Prodigal Son” in which the religious aspect takes a back seat to the attention that Rubens dedicates to the stable, the animals and the nocturnal landscape.

Overall, our painting does nothing more than document the complex experience of an artist who was a court painter as well as director of the collections of Archduke Wilhelm of Austria (a collection which became the main nucleus of the Kunsthistorisches Museum), marking himself as one of the most versatile personalities of the Flemish Baroque.

Measurements: L 78.5 X 63

Its authenticity is certified

An invoice or receipt is issued in accordance with the law

Shipping throughout Europe do not hesitate to contact us