The Guardhouse
David Teniers the Younger
1640–1650
- 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.)
- Genre
- oil on canvas
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Styles
Tags
gamesfabricoil paintings (visual works)paintingflemishWindowbuildingsred (color)blue (color)paintcanvasfeathersgamblingCuirassblueoil on canvasyouthhelmetsSoldiersdrumsmenLeisureTableoil paint (paint)painting (image making)swords17th Centurypainting techniquesstill lifebuildingshieldsgunscardsmusical instrumentsinteriorwhite (color)childrenweaponsboysoil paintingArmoreuropean paintinginstrumentsflagsmetal
About
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 treating armor as a still-life subject, Teniers followed the precedent of Jan Breughel the Elder, whose daughter he had married.
