Antique Master Print-MEN-SMOKING-DRINKING-Delfos-Brouwer-1754

Four men smoking and drinking at a table

Made by Abraham Delfos after Adriaen Brouwer.

Medium: Etching on hand laid (verge) paper.

Sheet size: 21.3 x 30 cm (8.39 x 11.81 inch). Image size: 10.8 x 16.3 cm. (4.25 x 6.42 inch).

Condition: good, given age. Light foxing. General age-related toning and/or occasional minor defects from handling. Please study scan carefully.

MEN-SMOKING-DRINKING | PCO-C43-38

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Source: unknown, to be determined.

Reference: Collection Rijksmuseum-1(2).

Biography engraver: Abraham Delfos (1731-1820) was a Dutch artist, art dealer and organiser of auctions.

Biography artist: Adriaen Brouwer (c.1605-1638) was a Flemish painter active in Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the first half of the 17th century. Brouwer was an important innovator of genre painting through his vivid depictions of peasants, soldiers and other “lower class” individuals engaged in drinking, smoking, card or dice playing, fighting, music making etc. in taverns or rural settings. Brouwer contributed to the development of the genre of tronies, i.e. head or facial studies, which investigate varieties of expression. In his final year he produced a few landscapes of a tragic intensity. Brouwer’s work had an important influence on the next generation of Flemish and Dutch genre painters. Although Brouwer produced only a small body of work, Dutch masters Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt collected it.