TENIERS, DAVID D.J.
1610 Antwerp - 1690 Brussels


Title: Old Lady, Enjoying the Rose Scent, next to her a Dog.
Technique: Oil on wood.
Measurement: 15.5 x 12.5cm.
Notation: Monogrammed lower left on a stone: "T in D".
Frame: Framed.
Provenance:
Private ownerhisp, Germany.

We are grateful to Margret Klinge, Düsseldorf, who examined the painting in the original, for her kind support while cataloguing it.

David Teniers the Younger is perhaps the Flemish artist of the 17th century who, alongside Peter Paul Rubens, who was a generation older, shaped our view of the art of his time. He learnt his craft in Antwerp from his father, David Teniers the Elder, and became a member of the Guild of St Luke there in 1633. David Teniers II mastered all areas of painting and was extremely innovative and influential. His extensive oeuvre includes portraits, history paintings and religious themes, but he is still particularly popular today as a painter of genre paintings of peasant life. From 1647, the artist, whose works can be found in all the leading collections of his time, was in the service of the governor of the Netherlands and became court painter from 1651. This position also involved looking after the archducal art collection and David Teniers created the first ever illustrated catalogue of the collection with his 'Theatrum pictorium'. His paintings of the archduke's picture rooms, in which he shows the actual objects, are also a completely new and still unrivalled documentation of their time.
David Teniers, who maintained a large workshop with pupils, is also regarded as the initiator of the founding of the Antwerp Academy of Arts.
Allegorical thematic sequences occur frequently in David Tenier's work. The artist has symbolised the four seasons, the four elements or even the five senses in small-format individual panels. It can be assumed that the small monogrammed panel shown here is part of such a context. The old lady smelling a rose symbolises the sense of smell, which is also the best sense of the dog at her side. Outside, in front of a vast but reduced landscape, she sits on a chair behind which stands the rose bush from which she probably plucked the stems that now lie on her lap. An implied architectural element delimits the pictorial space to the right and lends the scene a certain intimacy. Even without the context of the sensory depiction, the picture is captivating and conveys a quiet melancholy: savouring the scent of the roses, the old lady is perhaps thinking of the past; the faithful dog remains by her side. It is precisely this four-legged friend that also appears in another painting by David Tenier II: in a kitchen interior dated 1644 (now Mauritshuis, The Hague), he stands prominently in the foreground.
The Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig has a portrait of an old woman in an armchair (around 1650), which is very similar to the lady in the present painting. These two comparative pieces could be used to date the work.