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David Teniers II
(Flemish, 1610 — 1690)
Monkeys in the Kitchen (1645)
Inventory Number: 568
Oil on canvas.
14 x 12 inches (36 x 30.5 cm)
Teniers was born in Antwerp, Belgium and moved to Brussels around 1647. He was a prolific painter and is best known for his scenes of peasant life, in the tradition of Brueghel.
The range of themes taken up by David Teniers the Younger was extremely wide, and amongst his many skills was a talent for depicting animals. Monkeys in the Kitchen shows a company of monkeys who have unceremoniously taken up residence in a kitchen, drinking wine, sucking on fruits, playing cards and cooking meat on a spit. Some of them are wearing rakish velvet berets. Animals imitating the behaviour of people is a theme whose roots go far back into the fables of Classical literature. Such subjects, as in this painting, were intended as a humourous method of instruction: he who gives himself over to sensuous pleasures, blindly following his lower instincts, descends to the level of the monkey. Teniers' composition is not simply an amusing parody, but an excellent picture, in which the artist skillfully depicts light and the varied textures of objects in the room, such as the wooden furniture, pottery and glasses.
Size can be commissioned smaller or larger.
Collection of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.