BRAUWER, brou'er, or BROUWER, Adrian, Dutch painter: b. Haarlem, or narde in East Flanders, 1608; d. Antwerp 1640. He made designs of flowers and birds, which were stitched upon caps and bonnets sold by his mother, a poor woman, to the peasants. Franz Hals, a distinguished painter of lem, happening to see some of these, was so struck by the talent which they evinced that he invited the young artist to receive tions at his house, where he kept him hard at work in a garret, and appropriated to self the proceeds of his pictures. Here wer remained for many months, ignorant of the estimation in which his talent was held abroad, until by the assistance of his fellow pupil, Adrian van Ostade, he was enabled to escape to Amsterdam. The discovery of the reputation he had acquired seems to have crushed rather than incited his ambition. ceiving the prices which his pictures manded, and his own facility in executing them, he yielded to a natural taste for gross ures, and painted only when it was necessary to procure money to indulge in dissipations. During the wars with Spain he started on a journey to Antwerp, but being unprovided with a passport he was imprisoned on suspicion of being a spy. The Duke d'Aremberg, a fellow prisoner, recognizing his talent, induced him to paint something. The subject was a group
of soldiers playing at cards which the artist sketched from his prison window, and the picture being shown to Rubens he at once nounced it a work of Brauwer, whose release he immediately procured, and whom from miration of his genius he received as an mate into his house. Brauwer's longing for his old life, howeVer, soon induced him to leave his protector, and after a brief career of less dissipation he died in the public hospital of Antwerp. His coloring is good, his facility of execution remarkable and his tion excellent; so that his composition is nearly always good. He is one of the greatest of the Dutch painters. Among his most notable works are ; of Moerdyck' • 'The Smoker) (in the Louvre) ; 'The Drinker) ; 'The (little) Smoker) ; ern Interior) ; 'Quarrelling Players' ; 'The ; (Spanish Soldiers at Dice' ; lem Tavern several portraits of self and numerous brilliant landscapes. His biography by Schmidt-Degeener appeared in Brussels in 1908. See also Bode. 'Great Mas ters of Dutch and Flemish Painting' (New York 1909).