About the Artist, from Wikipedia:
David Teniers II was known as a hard worker who was extremely prolific. About two thousand paintings are thought to have been painted by the artist. He was extremely versatile and tried his hand at all the genres then practiced in Flanders including history, genre, landscape, portrait and still life.
Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene and scenes with alchemists and physicians. He also painted many religious scenes among which stand out his many compositions treating the subjects of the Temptation of St Anthony and hermit saints in grottoes or deserts.
A major influence on David Teniers the Younger’s early work was the work of the Flemish painter Adriaen Brouwer.
The personal style of Teniers was visible from the outset. An important distinction was that, unlike Brouwer who placed these genre scenes mainly indoors, Teniers gradually moved his scenes into the open air and started to give the landscape a major place in his work from the 1640s. This was a common development in Flemish painting at the time. The smoky and monochrome tonality of the interiors from the 1630s was replaced by a luminous, silvery atmosphere, in which the peasants sit at their ease, conversing or playing cards. These paintings show a radical move towards a more positive attitude towards country life and the peasantry than was reflected in his earlier satirical pieces influenced by Brouwer.
In the 18th century, Parisian collectors eagerly competed to lay their hands on Teniers’ works. They knew the artist chiefly for his idealized scenes of rural life, paintings of village feasts, interiors with peasants and guardroom scenes. Teniers’ work was very much admired by French painters of that time.
Credits and Attributions
“Tavern with a pair of dancers” by David Teniers II. Oil on canvas. Munich, Germany. Bavarian State Picture Gallery via Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:David Teniers II Taverna s paroi Tanz (1645).jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:David_Teniers_II_Taverna_s_paroi_Tanz_(1645).jpg&oldid=222921557 (accessed December 28, 2018).
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 