1240 - Abraham Teniers

Abraham Teniers Bowls Players Oil on panel (parquetted). 36.5 x 52 cm. Monogrammed lower left: A.T–F. Certificate Ellis Dullaart, RKD, The Hague, 6.3.2024. Provenance Richard Maison d'Enchères, Villefranche-sur-Saône, 13.1.2024, lot 35. – Acquired there by the current owner. – Private Collection, Saxony. Teniers' bowls players enjoy a pastime outside the tavern that was played in seventeenth-century Flanders much as it is today. They smoke and drink beer with relish while the throw of the player on the left is watched intently and debated. Abraham Teniers, the younger brother and pupil of David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690), gives generous prominence in his appealing composition to the broad, cloud-streaked sky and to the bright expanse of ground in the foreground. Like a stage for the figures on either side, this open space sets the challenge of the throw before the viewer's eyes. The composition was so successful that in the eighteenth century it served as the model for an etching by Philip Lambert Joseph Spruyt, in which the design was attributed to Abraham's brother David (fig. 1). Abraham's signature is still visible in this faithful etching as well. Only a few works by him are known with certainty. The painting is listed in the RKD under number 311485 as a work by Abraham Teniers. For comparative illustrations, see the printed catalogue as well as the PDF version.