UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:_May 1, 2006_______ I, __Jennifer Eckman__________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: Master in Arts in: Art History It is entitled: “Forbidden Indulgences: A Study of Adriaen Brouwer’s Peasant Scenes, 1631-1638” This work and its defense approved by: Chair: Kristi Nelson, PhD______________ Diane Mankin, PhD_____________ Mikiko Hirayama, PhD__________ ______________________________ __________________________ Forbidden Indulgences: A Study of Adriaen Brouwer's Peasant Scenes, 1631-1638 A thesis submitted to the Art History Faculty of the School of Art/ College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Art History Jennifer Louise Eckman 2006 Thesis Committee Chair: Kristi Nelson, Ph. D. Reader: Diane Mankin, Ph. D. Reader: Mikiko Hirayama, Ph. D. Abstract During the seventeenth century, the Flemish painter Adriaen Brouwer (1605/6-1638) specialized in low-life images of peasants indulging themselves in forbidden activities such as drinking, smoking, and fighting. A unique element of his work is the expressive body gestures and grotesque facial expressions of the figures. Chapter one addresses several questions such as why Brouwer chose this type of genre and whether or not there is symbolic and moralizing meaning incorporated into his work. Chapter two, three, and four are separated by each indulgence – drinking, smoking, and fighting. In these three chapters, I conduct a formal analysis, with a small portion of iconographical interpretation, of a selection of his peasant scenes within the socio-historical context of the Low Countries during the last period of his career, 1631-1638. To show how Brouwer rendered this subject differently than other Netherlandish artists, his paintings are compared to several of his contemporaries’ works. Acknowledgements I am most grateful to a small group of individuals that have helped me along the way during my struggles of completing this discourse. My greatest appreciation goes out to Dr. Diane Mankin for pushing me to write a better thesis and Dr. Kristi Nelson for her generous support. I am also indebted to my classmates Mary Burzlaff, Bobbie McTurner, and Cate Yellig for reading and correcting my papers. I especially want to thank Maurice Lamar who has been there for me through graduate school and helped me get through it all. Lastly, I want to thank everyone that has assisted me through this process. Contents List of Illustrations…………………………………………………………………………. 2 Introduction………………………………………………………………............................ 5 Chapter One “Adriaen Brouwer: The Man and His Work”………………………………... 11 Chapter Two “Drinking: Belligerent Boors”………………………………………………. 23 Chapter Three “Smoking: A Narcotic Ceremony”………………………………………… 36 Chapter Four “Fighting: A Powerful Scene of Unleashed Passion”……………………….. 57 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………. 68 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………….. 71 Illustrations………………………………………………………………………………… 77 1 List of Illustrations Figure 1. Pieter Bruegel, The Flight between Carnival and Lent, 1559 2. Pieter Bruegel, The Peasant Wedding, 1567 3. Adriaen Brouwer, The Smokers, c.1636 4. Adriaen Brouwer, Drinking Company, 1631-38 5. Adriaen Brouwer, Innkeeper, 1631-38 6. Adriaen Brouwer, Tavern Scene, 1631-38 7. Adriaen Brouwer, Five Men Fighting, 1631-38 8. David Teniers the Younger, Peasants Celebrating Twelfth Night, 1635 9. David Teniers the Younger, Peasants in a Tavern, c.1633 10. Adriaen van Ostade, Interior with Drinking Figures and Crying Children, 1634 11. Adriaen van Ostade, Peasants Drinking and Making Music in a Barn, c.1635 12. Adriaen van Ostade, Comedian Reading in a Tavern, 1633 13. Adriaen Brouwer, The Quartet, 1631-38 14. Jan Miense Molenaer, Taste, 1637 15. David Teniers the Younger, Taste, c.1640 16. Jan Miense Molenaer, The King Drinks, c.1634-35 17. Adriaen van Ostade, Peasants Merrymaking, late 1630s 18. Artist Unknown, Emblem from Roemer Visscher, Sinne-poppen, 1614 19. Adriaen Brouwer, Two Cavaliers, 1631-38 20. Adriaen Brouwer, Tavern Interior, before 1631 21. Adriaen Brouwer, The Moerdijk Peasants, 1627-1630 2 22. David Teniers the Younger, Le bonnet vert, c.1637 23. David Teniers the Younger, Tabagie, c.1645-50 24. Adriaen van Ostade, The Smoker, before 1647 25. Adriaen van Ostade, The Smoker at the Window, c.1648-50 26. Gerrit Dou, Painter with Pipe and Book, c.1645 27. Adriaen Brouwer, Smell, 1631-38 28. Adriaen Brouwer, Smoker, 1631-38 29. Adriaen van Ostade, Smoker Leaning on the Back of a Chair, c.1652 30. Gerrit Dou, Old Man Lighting a Pipe, c.1635 31. Adriaen Brouwer, Tobacco Inn, 1631-38 32. Adriaen Brouwer, Pancake Woman, before 1631 33. Jonas Suyderhoef after Adriaen Brouwer, Three Peasants in an Interior, date unknown 34. Adriaen Brouwer, Tobacco Inn, 1631-38 35. Jan Miense Molenaer, A Family Merrymaking, c.1638-42 36. Jan Miense Molenaer, Figures Smoking and Playing Music in an Inn, c.1640s 37. Jacob van Velsen, Musical Company, 1631 38. Adriaen van Ostade, Peasants in a Tavern, c.1635 39. Adriaen van Ostade, Interior of a Barn, with Peasants and Musicians, 1643 40. Joos van Craesbeeck, Brawl at an Inn: “Death is Fierce and Quick (De Dood is Fel en Snel),” date unknown 41. Adriaen Brouwer, Peasants and Soldiers Playing Cards, 1631-38 42. Adriaen Brouwer, Fight Over Cards, 1631-38 43. Jan Miense Molenaer, Battle Between Carnival and Lent, c.1633-34 3 44. Adriaen van Ostade, The Brawl, 1637 45. Adriaen Brouwer, Fight Scene, 1631-38 46. Adriaen Brouwer, Two Peasants Fighting, 1631-38 47. David Teniers the Younger, Le bonnet blanc, 1644 48. David Teniers the Younger, Card Players, c.1644-45 4 Introduction The Flemish painter Adriaen Brouwer (1605/6-1638) painted low-life images during his short artistic career of fifteen years. Humorous depictions of ill-behaved peasants dominate his oeuvre. Because his works are full of pictorial and cultural details, I will conduct a formal analysis, with a small portion of iconographical interpretation, of a selection of his peasant scenes within the socio-historical context of the Low Countries during the last period of his career, 1631-1638. The selected images consist mainly of indoor tavern scenes with only a few figures, who indulge themselves in “forbidden activities”1 such as drinking, smoking, and fighting. Considerably popular during his lifetime, Brouwer’s works were mostly ignored for the following two hundred years until art historians rediscovered him in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Relatively few books have been written about Brouwer; most scholars attempt to document his life and determine the chronological order and stylistic development of his oeuvre. Unfortunately, little is known about the artist because very few documents about his life are available. However, there are some useful sources such as guild documents that help to interpret his place in history. Here is what we know about Brouwer’s life. He was born in Oudenaarde, in Flanders, in 1605 or January 1606. His father died in 1621/2 when he was sixteen years old but Brouwer was not living with his parents. Between 1621 and 1625 it is unknown where Brouwer resided, but it is speculated that he possibly studied under Frans Hals at this time. By 1625/6 he is recorded in Amsterdam and Haarlem, and in 1631/2 he is known to be back in southern Netherlands in 1 A common phrase adopted by contemporary Netherlandish scholars, such as Margret Klinge in her introduction to Adriaen Brouwer/David Teniers the Younger: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings (Bradford, England: Noortman & Brod, 1982), to describe the luxuries of drinking and smoking favored by seventeenth-century society especially peasants. 5 Antwerp. There he enrolled as a member of the Guild of St. Luke. He remains there until his early death in January 1638; the cause of death is unknown.2 In addition to earlier literature on Brouwer, his paintings were exhibited with other Dutch and Flemish artists at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1932 and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1941. By the 1930s, the majority of his works in the United States were in private collections. The Alte Pinakothek in Munich, Germany houses the largest collection of Brouwer’s paintings consisting of eighteen paintings. I visited the museum in the summer of 2005 and viewing his works sparked my interest in learning more about the artist. However, it seems that no one has conducted an extensive study of individual pieces by Brouwer. By analyzing the compositions closely – comparing his work to his contemporaries, and referring to contextual, cultural, and historical material – I intend to explore the significance of the spatial environment within Brouwer’s tavern scenes and look for the possible symbolic meanings embedded there. Information about Brouwer and a few of his works have been included in many books on Dutch and Flemish art, but the entries are usually brief. The short length of Brouwer’s career, the difficulty in determining the dates and authenticity of his work, as well as his limbo position between Flanders and Holland, may be some of the reasons why art historians have largely omitted him from scholarly discourse. However, during his lifetime, Netherlandish audiences embraced his depictions of rough peasants in tavern scenes for their down-to-earth realism. One of his admirers was Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) who owned at least seventeen of Brouwer’s paintings. 2 Brouwer’s biographical information is collaborated from Klinge’s introduction and Gerard Knuttel’s monograph Adriaen Brouwer: The Master and His Work (The Hague: L.J.C. Boucher, 1962). 6 Brouwer's body of work consists of at least sixty paintings, a few drawings, and a small number of prints. Early in his career, his compositions featured large groups of peasants celebrating outdoors, while later he depicted indoor tavern scenes and landscape paintings with a limited number of figures. Brouwer did not date or sign his work, and much of the information about his paintings is based on historical sources that are not consistently reliable.