A family concert on the terrace of a country house: self portrait of the artist with his family
Teniers, David, II (1610-1690)
Additional titles
Musicerende familie op terras
David Teniers en zijn familie
- Private collection
Item location
Description
Several scholars suppose that the the features of the man playing the gamba in this work recall those of the painter. Others believe that this is just an anonymous family portrait. The most extensive description of this painting is provided here, from the Sotheby's auction catalogue of 2008 (2008-07-09, lot nr. 23):"The artist is seen here seated, playing the viol, on the terrace of a country house. Seated next to him, reading from a songbook, is his wife Anna, grand-daughter of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and daughter of Jan Brueghel the Elder and his second wife Catherian van Marienberghe, and sister of Ambrosius Brueghel. After her father's death in 1625 (her mother died two years later), Anna became the ward of Rubens, who was a witness at her wedding to Teniers in 1637. Between them we see their son David Teniers III (1638-1685), who was also to be a painter. The page bringing wine has traditionally been held to be the artist's younger brother Abraham Teniers (1629-1670). J.P Meulemeester has tentatively suggested that the figure in the doorway on the left may be that of Theodor Teniers, another brother of the artist. The identity of the woman facing away from us is discussed below.
The identification of David Teniers the Younger is beyond doubt. The artist is easily recognisable from Pieter de Jode's engraved portrait of him, which, according to the legend, is after a lost self-portrait. Another self-portrait, full-length, in Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts, confirms the identification. His wife Anna can easily be recognised in Teniers' full-length portrait of her in York City Art Gallery, and both are seen in a pair of portraits painted about ten to twelve years later in a private collection, where Anna is portrayed with another son, Justinus Leopold Teniers, born in 1653.
Another version of the composition, with important differences, is in Berlin. The Berlin picture, which is painted in more muted colours with greens and browns predominant, is much wider, with a park landscape and distant buildings extending to the right, with a wine cooler in the foreground. On the table is an oboe and some music, and behind it is a bass instrument, probably a Trumscheit (trumpet marine) resting on a green cloth spread over the balustrade. These are visible because the standing young woman, playing the gitaar with her back to us in the present picture, is absent in the Berlin version, although an X-ray shows that she was originally included. The identity of this figure, who occupies an important position in the present picture, is unknown, and the obvious absence of a visible physiognomy makes any positive identification of her impossible. Meulemeester suggested it might be Teniers' sister-in-law Catherina Brueghel, older sister of his wife, whose dates are unkown. It seems more likely that she is Anna's younger sister, Clara-Eugenia Brueghel (1623-1693), whom we would plausibly see here as a young woman of about 22. This figure also occurs in the only other self-portrait with his family by David Teniers, a recently discovered painting in which the family are arranged in the lower left quadrant of a pastoral landscape. The standing female figure is the only compositional link with the other paintings, since in the 1644 picture the other figures are quite differently arranged, with the artist seated on a bank playing a violin. A similar young woman in black, facing away from the viewer, and holding a fan in her left hand instead of playing an instrument, occurs in the Kermesse of 1642 at Waddesdon Manor, also in conjunction with probable portraits of Teniers, his wife Anna, and their two children.
The monkey atop the balustrade, common to both this and the Berlin version, may allude to Teniers' ability to imitate ('ape') nature. In Teniers' singeries monkeys ape humans, and in two pictures by Teniers in the Prado, they appear as artists and sculptors. The monkey certainly seems to mock the company assembled below. To have an exotic pet such as a monkey also shows that the owner was a wealthy and successful man, and thus also indirectly alludes to Teniers' ability as a painter.
In both the present picture and the Berlin version the sitters are portrayed at the same age. On such grounds, both versions could be dated circa 1645-6 since David Teniers III appears as a boy of about seven or eight, his father as a man in his mid 30s and his mother about ten years younger (but if the page is Abraham Teniers, he looks a rather immature sixteen or seventeen, and the traditional identification is probably spurious). The Berlin version has traditionally been considered as the earlier of the two on grounds of style and handling. Klinge initially dated the present picture several years later than the Berlin version, to circa 1648, at which date it would herald the lighter more pastel-like colour scheme of Teniers' later style. In a more recent article, published in 1993 Mrs Klinge reverses this view, dating the present picture, which she now considers to be the prime version, to circa 1644-5.10 She was the first to observe that the area of overpaint in the Berlin picture, covering the young woman in black, is of markedly poorer quality than the rest of the picture, and she concluded that the alteration to that painting was probably made by a later hand, sometime before Le Bas' engraving in reverse of 1747, and perhaps still in the 17th Century. Principally on the basis of the landscape to the right, which is the best preserved part of the visible part of the painting, Mrs. Klinge now dates the Berlin version to the early 1650s.
In 1995 it was possible to place the two pictures side by side, an exercise which served to emphasis the considerable contrasts between their colour-schemes. It also highlighted the weakness of the area of overpaint covering the young woman in black, (who is just visible to the naked eye). The Teniers monogram on the Berlin picture is false since it rests on an area of overpaint.
It was not unusual in the Netherlands in the 17th Century for painters to depict themselves or each other playing music, for example see Joris van Sieten's Self Portrait (whereabouts unknown) and Lute-playing Painter (Leide, Lakenhal), and Gonzales Cocques ' Painter playing the Cittern in his Studio (Schwerin, Staaatliches Museum). To do so may have had the purpose of professional self –aggrandizement, since music had always been one of the Liberal Arts, while painting, regulated by guilds which included house painters, was then generally held to be a craft. The comparison between musical and colour harmony, and between music and pictorial harmony, so eloquently drawn in the present picture, would have been readily understood in Teniers' day. Equally well understood would have been the obvious connection between musical harmony and the harmonious family, in which each member plays a part in the same way that the members of a musical ensemble each play an instrument. Music-playing family portraits were popular in both the North and South Netherlands; Teniers' Antwerp contemporary Gonzales Cocques was assiduous in the production of these."
Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)
Guitar [3237] (10 tuning pegs (five courses). Only the backside of the upper neck and head is visible.)Viola da gamba [3604]
Image URLs
image link 1Sotheby's online catalogue image
image link 2RKD record
Bibliographic references
Pauw, Napoléon de. "Les trois peintres: David Teniers et leurs homonymes", Annales de l'Academie Royale d'Archéologie de Belgique 50 (1897) 336, 349.Smith, John. A catalogue raisonné of the works of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish and French painters (London: Smith and Son, 1829-1842) vol. 3, 375, no. 440.
Le siècle de Rubens: Museés royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique, Bruxelles, 15 octobre-12 décembre 1965 (Bruxelles: Museés royaux des beaux-arts, 1965) 262, n. 277.
Leppert, Richard D. "David Teniers the Younger and the image of music", Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (1978) 114, fig. 35.
Catalogue of paintings, 13th-18th century: Picture Gallery, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1978) 428, n. 857. ISBN: 3786112150.
Bruegel: Une dynastie de peintres, 18 septembre-18 novembre 1980, Palais des beaux-arts, Bruxelles (Bruxelles: Europalia 80, 1980) 269.
Klinge, Margret. Adriaen Brouwer, David Teniers the Younger:
A loan exhibition of paintings, New York, 7 October-30 October 1982, Maastricht, 19 November-11 December 1982 (London: Noortman & Brod, 1982) 9-10, pl. 2.
Klinge, Margret. David Teniers the Younger: Paintings, drawings (Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1991) 39, 129-130.
Klinge, Margret. "Das Berliner Familienbildnis von David Teniers dem Jüngeren", Die Malerei Antwerpens: Gattungen, Meister, Wirkungen (Köln: Locher, 1994) 104-113, pl. 2. ISBN: 3930054183.
Meulemeester, J.P. Portraits de famille dans quelques tableaux de David Teniers II (Bruxelles: privately printed, 1999) vol. 1, 10, 17.
David Teniers der Jüngere, 1610-1690: Alltag und Vergnügen in Flandern, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe 2005–2006 (Karlsruhe: Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2005) 186-187, cat. no. 47. ISBN: 3925212639.