David Teniers

DAVID TENIERS THE YOUNG (Antwerp, ca. 1610 - Brussels, 1690).
"Characters."
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 21 x 44 cm; 49,5 x 61 cm (frame).
In this work the author captures an interior scene with three protagonists, all of them reading a letter. They are slightly displaced from the center to the right, while to their left, in the background, two children can be seen playing with a cat. The painting is part of the aesthetic current that represents the customs, one of the genres that enjoyed greater development in the Dutch Baroque school. Thus, the space is clearly defined and meticulously described, and the figures are represented in large size.
This work is therefore part of the genre of tavern painting, created in early Baroque Flanders by the masters Adriaen Brouwer (1605 - 1638) and David Teniers (1610 - 1690), which was soon to arrive in Holland. As its name suggests, these are scenes set in taverns, called costumbrista works for showing the common customs of the common people of the time, with a variety of styles important, but always maintaining both the theme and a clear preference for an earthy palette. Influenced by the two masters mentioned above, the painter who makes this type of work, usually works an interior space with a very refined chromatic range, based on earthy and ochre tones, typical of the naturalism of the first baroque. In terms of style, these painters would normally be close to Teniers (more detailed works; precise, loose but short brushstrokes, defining the shapes and qualities of figures and objects, without playing down the importance of drawing), or to Brower (more caricatured style, and brushstrokes and shapes different from those of Teniers).
Undoubtedly, it was in the painting of the Dutch school where the consequences of the political emancipation of the region, as well as the economic prosperity of the liberal bourgeoisie, were most openly manifested. The combination of the discovery of nature, objective observation, the study of the concrete, the appreciation of the everyday, the taste for the real and material, the sensitivity to the seemingly insignificant, made the Dutch artist commune with the reality of everyday life, without seeking any ideal alien to that same reality.