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Brickmakers near Hemiksem
David Teniers the YoungerBefore 1690
Dulwich Picture Gallery
London, United Kingdom
The church is the Cistercian abbey of St. Bernard (now destroyed), and the river is the Scheldt, some miles south of Antwerp. Teniers owned a country house at Viloorde in the neighbourhood; the Hemiksem brickyard was one of the oldest in the Netherlands.
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Details
- Title: Brickmakers near Hemiksem
- Creator Lifespan: 1610 - 1690
- Date: Before 1690
- Physical Dimensions: w670 x h438 cm
- Type: Painting
- Medium: Oil
- null: Letter from Dr Johanna Hollestelle, 5.2.1976 identifying the site (file). Gives a long description of the significance of the site. A copy of DPG57 (which does not show the church) is reproduced n her book De Steenbakkerij in de Nederlanden toto omstreeks 1560, 1961 [check date], fig. 6.
- Work Nationality: Flemish
- Support: Panel
- Provenance: Paris, Robit sale, 1801, lot 149. Bt Michael Bryan; London, Michael Bryan; London, Sir Francis Bourgeois, 1811; Bourgeois Bequest, 1811.
- Inscriptions: D. TENIERS F
- Further Information: On the left is the church of the Cistercian abbey of St Bernard at Hemiksem, seen from the south. The abbey, founded in 1243 and situated on the right bank of the Scheldt river, south of Antwerp (Teniers’s country house at Vilvoorde was located in the vicinity), was dissolved after the French Revolution and completely rebuilt. The brick-yard visible in the middle distance was one of the earliest in The Netherlands, established by the abbey in the 13th century. The brick-maker can be seen at his bench, with the open drying store and the kiln beside it. In the foreground there are people at work, others in conversation, and some visitors. A preparatory drawing in Besançon shows the kiln and the open drying store, not the abbey or the people (Fig. 5). Stylistically, this is a typical example of Teniers’s landscapes of the 1640s and 1650s. Industrial landscapes such as this were frequently seen in romantic painting in England, but appear only occasionally in seventeenth century Netherlandish works. The depiction of accurate topographical views such as this suggests that it may have been commissioned by a specific patron. There are a few comparable scenes by Teniers, one with a lime-kiln (The Wellington Collection, Apsley House) – although it is questionable whether this is really by Teniers – and one with a sand quarry (National Trust, Petworth House). A similar composition is seen in The Bleaching Ground (The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham), which shows working figures, mostly women, with what may be a Cistercian church in the background. There is also a smaller version of the composition, without a church, by Teniers, now at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.
- Artist: Teniers, David the younger
- Acquisition Method: Bourgeois, Sir Peter Francis (Bequest, 1811)
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