Tavern Scene

David Teniers the Younger

National Gallery of Art

Two men sit playing cards at a narrow table as three more look on and others urinate, sleep, or gather near the entrance of a tavern in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale, peachy skin and wear jackets, pants, and hats in shades of fawn brown, muted marine blue, parchment white, and charcoal gray. The card players take up the bottom left quadrant of the composition. The player to our left holds his cards out so we can see them as he lifts a tall tankard. He sits on a wooden chair with a vivid red cap hanging from one rail on the back. The player across from him sits on a wooden box and has an iron key hanging from the hip we see. He shows his cards to a third man, directly across from us, who sits and leans forward nearly nose-to-nose, smiling broadly with lips parted. That third man wears an orchid-purple hat and earthy brown and blue clothing. He holds a long-stemmed white clay pipe in one hand and the handle of another tall tankard with the other. Two men, both with clay pipes, stand on the far side of the table to watch the action, and another stands facing away from us near the wall to the left, presumably urinating into a pot there. A knee-high jug with a pewter cap sits near the first player and a piece of chalk and a picture of an owl flanked by spectacles and a candle hang on the light brown wall overhead. This room opens onto a larger room beyond, where one man lies belly down on a bench with his face buried in his crossed arms. Another man sits on a bench to the right, and four men gather near the door on the far wall. A woman stands in the partially open door and looks at one of the men. Dishes and vessels line a high shelf to the left of the door, and a fire burns in a high-mantled fireplace to our right. In the lower right corner and again close to us, a barrel, clay dish, white cloth, chopped firewood, and a sleeping dog are near a wooden beam that parallels the edge of the painting. The artist signed the lower right corner, “D. TENIERS FEC,” and, on the picture of the owl are the letters “AA” and the date, 1658.