The Guardhouse
c. 1645
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
72.6 × 55.4 cm (28 9/16 × 21 13/16 in.); Framed: 87 × 69.9 × 5.1 cm (34 1/4 × 27 1/2 × 2 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
867
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The versatile Flemish painter David Teniers turned to military paraphernalia as the subject of his still lifes in the mid-1640s, as the long conflict of the Thirty Years’ War was drawing to a close. Here soldiers play cards in the dim interior of a guardhouse, while a page carries the officers’ cloaks. However, the chief subject of the work is the pile of discarded armor, weaponry, and parade gear—a saddle, musket, powder horn, charging spanner, and gauntlets—in the immediate foreground. In trea...
About the Artist
David Teniers the Younger · 1610–1690
David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690) was a Flemish painter who became one of the most versatile and prolific artists of the seventeenth-century Southern Netherlands, renowned for his peasant genre scenes, elegant gallery paintings, and his role as court painter and curator. Born in Antwerp, he trained under his father, David Teniers the Elder, and was influenced by Adriaen Brouwer's peasant subje...