David Teniers the Elder

Antwerp 1582 – Antwerp 1649

The Judgement of Paris

With later annotation ‘PBRIL.F / V.THV.L. / F’ | Lower left
Oil on panel laid on plywood
H. 41,8 cm. | W. 56,5 cm.

 


PROVENANCE
Private collection | Sweden | listed as by Paulus Bril and Theodor van Thulden;
Anonymous sale | Sotheby’s | London | 16 December 1999, | Lot 11;
Anonymous sale | Van Ham Kunstauktionen | Cologne | 30 October 2000 | Lot 1844;
Private collection

LITERATURE
Duwerger, E. & Vlieghe, H. (1971). David Teniers der Ältere. Ein vergessener flämischer Nachfolger Adam Elsheimers. Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert, p. 45, 79 and 82, ill. 33

 


CATALOGUE NOTE

Know at the RKD, The Hague, The Netherlands, under no. 62811, as by David Teniers I. Although examination of the painting under a stereomicroscope showed that the signature must have been applied at the same time or only little later, this i definitely a later addition. Vlieghe does not address the signature in his description and notes that the painting was in a Swedish collection where it was listed as by Paulus Bril and Theodor van Thulden. On the basis of style-critical comparisons to David Tenier the Elder, he attributes it to this artist. There are no collaborative work known by Paulus Bril and Theodor van Thulden and such a collaboration would be especially unlikely since Van Thulden is a generation younger than Bril. The piercing shafts of heavenly light in the resent composition recall the effect in Teniers’ The Conversion of Saint Paul, attributed to Teniers by Dr. Margret Klinge, Düsseldorf, who dates that painting to the 1620s.