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Artist or Maker: David Teniers II (Antwerp 1610-1690 Brussels)
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Provenance: M. Bellanger collection (when engraved in 1748).
Anonymous sale; Paris, 18 February 1790, lot 9.
Captain Marryat, R.N.
Thomas Howard, Blackheath; (+), Christie's, London, 10 May 1873, lot 86, 'Le Cuisinier Flamand' (430 gns. to Agnew).
H.W.F. Bolckow; Christie's, London, 2 May 1891, lot 108 'Le Cuisinier Flamand' (267 gns. to McLean).
James Ross, Montreal; Christie's, London, 8 July 1927, lot 25, 'Le Cuisiner Flamand' (162 gns. to Duits).
with Galerie Sanct Lucas, Vienna.
Private collection, Germany.
with Noortman, Maastricht, 1988, whence acquired by the present owners.
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Exhibited: London, British Institution, 1835, no. 25.
Antwerp, Vleeshuis, Tis al vant Vercken, 27 December 1988-27 January 1989.
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Literature: J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., III, London, 1831, p. 322, no. 228, 'The Interior of a Kitchen'.
M. Klinge and D. Lüdke, in the catalogue of the exhibition, David Teniers der Jüngere 1610-1690 - Alltag und Vergnügen in Flandern, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; and Sonderausstellung des Landes Baden-Württemberg, 2005-2006, p. 335, under no. 116.
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Notes: Renée Elisabeth Marlié Lepicié, Le Cuisinier Flamand, 1748, in reverse (see fig. 1).
THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
This picture gained its French appellation, Le Cuisinier Flamand, from the title given to an engraving made after it by Reneé-Elisabeth Lepicié in 1748 (Nagler, 1839, VII, p. 448, no. 4; see fig.1). The kitchen interior was a theme that Teniers first took up in the 1640s and frequently returned to throughout his career. The earliest known dated example is a picture of 1643 (The Prado, Madrid; inv. no. 1798), in which a seated man is opening mussels in a well-stocked kitchen with a hearth behind. The following year Teniers made a more ambitious treatment of the subject, portraying his wife peeling apples, with their son David at her side, at a laden table in a large kitchen (Mauritshuis, The Hague; inv. no. 260), and in 1646 he painted the Palace Kitchen (Hermitage, St. Petersburg). The exact meaning of these subjects has been debated. Van Thiel opined that the inclusion of a swan and a pie in the Mauritshuis picture suggests that it might have been painted for a wedding feast, while Margret Klinge later suggested that it may have been executed in honour of his wife, or as a more general paradigm of domestic virtue (see J. van Thiel, Openbaar Kunstbezit, XIV, 1970, no. 40; and M. Klinge, in the catalogue of the exhibition, David Teniers the Younger, Antwerp, 1991, p. 120, no. 36). More plausible perhaps is Klinge's interpretation of these pictures as displays of earthly abundance (ibid.). As exemplified by the present work, Teniers includes creatures from the four elements: fish from the sea, birds from the air, game and domestic animals from the earth, while fire is symbolised by the hearth beyond, to affect a representation of the Four Elements within a domestic genre scene. Dietmar Lüdke has recently compared the present work more closely to a horizontal format picture of 1668, sold at Christie's, New York, 11 January 1995, lot 19 (op. cit.).
David Teniers II became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1632 following an apprenticeship with his father. In 1637, he married Anna, the youngest daughter and heiress of Jan Brueghel I. In the same year he served as Master of the Chapel of the Holy Family in St. Jacobskerk, a post he held until 1639. He was elected dean of the St. Luke's Guild in 1644 and was working for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, Governor of the Southern Netherlands, by 1647. He was made court painter in 1651. Teniers moved from Antwerp to Brussels in 1656 and bought a building near the archducal palace that he had rebuilt as a house and studio. Among his patrons were Leopold Wilhelm's successor, Don Juan of Austria, Prince Willem II of Orange, Queen Christina of Sweden, and Philip IV of Spain.
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