DAVID TENIERS THE YOUNGER | THE VILLAGE DOCTOR

Baron Philippe de Caters, Antwerp, by 1947;

With Galerie de Jonckheere, Brussels, 1980;

Private collection;

With Galerie de Jonckheere, Paris;

From whom acquired, April 2001. 

No larger than a standard piece of paper, this extraordinary painting by David Teniers the Younger, likely datable to the end of the 1650s or the beginning of the 1660s, records a familiar story known all too well by many: the fear of the dentist. Surrounding the small scene are such marvelous details that one gets lost in its mesmerizing intricacy, from the red hat of the patient balancing on the chair finial, to the dentist’s array of equipment on the table, and finally to the ointment jars stopped with wads of paper on the green tablecloth and in the small wall niche above.  

Long before the use of anesthesia or painkillers of any kind (except alcohol), not to mention any attention to sanitary conditions, operations—be they removing a bump on the back or a decayed tooth in the mouth—were precarious events. For this reason many people who called themselves physicians at the time were really untrained charlatans, self-declared surgeons, dentists, and doctors of medicine. Many paintings of this theme made in Holland and Flanders in the seventeenth century, including those by Teniers, sought not only to ridicule or comment on these falsely lofty positions. They also, through their focus on pain, sought to elevate the plight of all people. Like Brouwer before him, Teniers focuses attention primarily on the expression of the seated man in order to further highlight the impending pain that is in store for him. 

Although David Teniers enjoyed an illustrious career as an artist, court painter and curator to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in Brussels, he never abandoned genre scenes. This is perhaps also due to his great respect and lifelong devotion for another fellow Flemish painter from Antwerp, Adriaen Brouwer, with whom Teniers' early works are often confused¹ and whom he is known to have copied during this period.² There is no mistaking the expressive elements of this scene, which we can appreciate by comparing a number of paintings by Brouwer, among the most suitable being the so-called Back Operation in Frankfurt dated from the mid-1630s (fig.1).³ 

In style and execution, The Village Doctor compares remarkably close to Teniers' Lute Player in the Liechtenstein Collection.  That painting must date to the early to mid 1650's, as attested by its remarkable provenance, having entered the Archducal collection in 1656 followed by the Liechtenstein collection in 1676.⁴  The two panels not only share a similar subtle looseness and fluidity in the handling of the brush, but also a comparable arrangement of elements within their compositions. Both have as their source of light a window opening in the upper left quadrant, both contain floating shelves on the far wall laden with small pots and jars, and both include a similar table partially covered by a green tablecloth arranged parallel to the picture plane.  

We are grateful to Dr. Margret Klinge for endorsing the attribution of the present lot and for her assistance with the catalogue entry.  

1. The three earliest works in the major 1991 exhibition devoted to Teniers were once considered to be by Brouwer, despite the fact that all of them are signed and two are even dated. See M. Klinge, David Teniers the Younger. Paintings. Drawings, Antwerp 1991, pp. 26-31, cat. nos. 1, 2 and 3.

2. Teniers copied Brouwer’s Backgammon Players. See Klinge 1991, p. 300, cat. no. 109, drawing by Teniers after a painting by Brouwer (fig. 109a).  See H. Vlieghe, David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690). A Biography, Turnhout 2011, fig. 10. 

3. Oil on panel, 34.5 by 27 cm, dated circa 1636. See Adriaen Brouwer. Master of Emotions. Between Rubens and Rembrandt, exhibition catalogue, Oudenaarde 2018, pp. 166-167, cat. no. 22.

4. See Klinge 1991, pp. 236-237, cat. no. 81.