PROPERTY OF AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION
ATTRIBUTED TO DAVID TENIERS II AND WORKSHOP (ANTWERP 1610-1690 BRUSSELS)
The Smokers
oil on panel
43 x 41.5 cm (16 3/4 x 15 3/4 in)

The present lot is very closely related to the painting by Teniers of the same composition now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in Madrid (Inv. no. 387 [1970.35]) which had been previously in England in the Harman Collection in the nineteenth century.

Highly prolific, critically and commercially successful, Teniers operated a large and accomplished workshop which included both his brother and his son. The high level of painterly refinement and meticulous brushwork present in our painting, coupled with the precision with which the composition relates to the Madrid painting, suggest that it was a product of the Teniers workshop, closely supervised, if not in part executed, by the master himself.

PROVENANCE:
possibly in the Habsburg territory of Bukovina (present day Romania) during the nineteenth century based on seals on the reverse; Private family collection, England, by descent.