The Smokers

Adriaen Brouwer painted The Smokers around 1636—one of his final works before his death at around 32—depicting the tavern culture of tobacco smoking that was still relatively new and somewhat transgressive in 17th-century Europe. Tobacco had been introduced to Europe from the Americas in the previous century and was by Brouwer's time associated with working-class male sociability, alehouses, and a certain earthy sensuality. Brouwer himself was notorious for his tavern-dwelling lifestyle, and his smokers have an autobiographical authenticity that distinguishes them from mere genre convention. The painting was enthusiastically collected by Rubens, who owned seventeen works by Brouwer at his death—testimony to the esteem in which this modest, rough-lived painter was held by the greatest Baroque master of the age.

The Smokers exemplifies Brouwer's extraordinary economy of means: a limited palette of warm tans, ochres, and greys, with figures painted with quick, decisive strokes that capture attitude and expression with minimal elaboration. The smoke itself is suggested rather than described, creating atmosphere through the warm, slightly hazy background. The faces—variously dreamy, animated, vacant—are each individualized with remarkable speed and precision.