ARTWORKS

Two Men playing Cards in the Kitchen of an Inn

David Teniers II (1610–1690)

The National Gallery, London

Two Men playing Cards in the Kitchen of an Inn

Image credit: The National Gallery, London

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Two bearded old men sit at a small table playing cards. What little light there is focuses on the white cap of one and the grey hair of the other, as well as their white collars, and reveals them to be better dressed than some other patrons of the inn. In the dingy back room, a young woman sits by an open fire making pancakes for a group of jostling peasants.

Teniers has painted the faces of the card players and their companions in a far less cartoon-like manner than is usual for him. The texture of their skin and their facial expressions are far more realistic than those of the men around the pancake maker, where Teniers has used his customary grotesque and exaggerated style. Pictures of ‘merry-making peasants’ – as they were known in Teniers’s time – were popular with well-to-do buyers, who would use them as a moral lesson but would also find them amusing.

The National Gallery, London

London

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Title

Two Men playing Cards in the Kitchen of an Inn

Date

probably 1635-40

Medium

Oil on oak

Measurements

H 55.5 x W 76.5 cm

Accession number

NG2600

Acquisition method

Salting Bequest, 1910

Work type

Painting

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Normally on display at

The National Gallery, London

Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England

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Artist or maker

David Teniers II

1610–1690

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