DAVID TENIERS, the younger (1610-169o), his more celebrated son, was born in Antwerp and was baptized on Dec. 15, 161o. Through his father, he was indirectly influenced by Elsheimer and by Rubens. We can also trace the influence of Adrian Brouwer at the outset of his career. In 1637 Teniers married the ward of Rubens, Anne Breughel, the daughter of John (Velvet) Breughel. He became a "master" in the gild of St. Luke in 1633. The Berlin Museum possesses a group of ladies and gentlemen dated Some first-rate works—the "Prodigal Son" and a group of "Topers" in the Munich Gallery, and a party of gentlemen and ladies at dinner, termed the "Five Senses," in the Brussels Mu seum—are instances of the perfection attained by the artist when he was probably scarcely twenty. His touch is of the rarest deli cacy, his colour at once gay and harmonious. He was little over thirty when the Antwerp gild of St. George enabled him to paint the marvellous picture now in the Hermitage Gallery in Leningrad —the "Meeting of the Civic Guards." Correct to the minutest de tail, yet striking in effect, the scene, under the rays of glorious sun shine, displays acquired knowledge and natural good taste. An other work of the same year (1643), now in the National Gallery, London, is "The Village Fete." Teniers was chosen by the common council of Antwerp to pre side over the gild of painters in 1644. The archduke Leopold William, who had assumed the government of the Spanish Nether lands, employed Teniers not only as a painter but as keeper of the collection of pictures he was then forming. With the rank and title of "ayuda de camara," Teniers took up his abode in Brussels in 1651. Immense sums were spent in the acquisition of paintings for the archduke. A number of valuable works of the Italian masters, now in the Vienna Museum, came from Leopold's gallery after having belonged to Charles I. and the duke of Buckingham.
De Bie (1661) states that Teniers was some time in London, col lecting pictures for the duke of Fuensaldafia, then acting as Leo pold's lieutenant in the Netherlands. Paintings in Madrid, Munich, Vienna and Brussels show what the imperial residence was at the time of Leopold, who is represented as conducted by Teniers and admiring some recent acquisition. No picture in the gallery is omitted, every one being inscribed with a number and the name of its author, so that the ensemble of these paintings might serve as an illustrated inventory of the collection. Still more interesting is a canvas, now in the Munich Gallery, showing Teniers at work in the palace, with an old peasant as a model and several on lookers. When Leopold returned to Vienna, the pictures travelled to Austria. Teniers remained in high favour with the new governor general, Don Juan, a natural son of Philip IV.
Shortly after the death of his wife in 1656 Teniers married Isabella de Fren, daughter of the secretary of the council of Brabant, and strove to prove his right to armorial bearings. ID 1663 Teniers founded the Academy at Brussels.
Teniers died in Brussels on April 25, 1690. David, his eldest son, a painter of talent and reputation, died in 1685. One of this third Teniers's pictures—"St. Dominic Kneeling before the Blessed Virgin," dated 1666—is in the church at Perck.