Game of Backgammon
David Teniers·1640s
Historical Context
David Teniers's Game of Backgammon from the 1640s belongs to his extensive body of interior genre scenes depicting the leisure pursuits of Flemish men — drinking, smoking, music-making, and games — in tavern or guardroom settings. Backgammon was one of the most popular board games in seventeenth-century Europe, played across all social classes and in the illustrations of the period frequently associated with Fortune and chance. Teniers's treatment brings the same warm, affectionate observation he gave to his more famous kermis scenes to this intimate interior: the players' concentration, the assembled equipment, the characteristic Flemish interior light filtering from a left window. His guardroom and tavern scenes were among the most collected genre paintings in seventeenth-century Europe, prized by the same aristocrats who admired his peasant festivals.
Technical Analysis
Teniers uses his characteristic left-window lighting to model the interior space, the warm amber light falling on the board and players while the back wall recedes into shadow. The figures are loosely but precisely characterised, and the backgammon board receives careful attention as the compositional focal point.
Provenance
Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (1674–1723), Regent of France; Louis I Duke of Orléans (1703–1752); Louis Philippe I (1725–1785), Duke of Orléans; Louis-Philippe II (1747–1793), Duke of Orléans / Philippe Égalité; Brought to London by Thomas Moore Slade, (exhibited for sale in the Royal Academy, London, April 1793); George Hibbert (1757–1837), London, England; Thomas Penrice (d. 1816), Great Yarmouth, England, by inheritance to John Penrice; John Penrice Sr. (1787-1844), sold, Christie's; (Sale: Christie's, London, England, 07/06/1844, to Farrer); Farrer; Private collection, sold, Christie's, London; (Sale: Christie's, London, England, 07/17/1925, no. 119 through S. A. Hecht, London, England to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Wise); Mr. and Mrs. Samuel D. Wise (Cleveland, Ohio), by gift to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1943; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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