A fine Brussels Teniers tapestry

     Workshop of Franz Van der Borcht, mid-18th cent. 

     Wool, silk threads and metal thread highlights.

Height:   8ft 7in  (262cm)      Width:   6ft 11in  (210cm)

Scenes of country folk (boers) in daily life were adapted from the paintings of David Teniers II (1610-1690) who was appointed as a de facto court painter by the Governor General of the Habsburg Netherlands, Archduke Leopold Wilhem of Austria. These scenes were popular with the ruling and ascendant bourgeois class who found them humorous and they became a fashionable style of tapestry during this period. Every important workshop in Brussels produced tapestries in this style. Often they depicted people who were staff, working on the estates.

The present tapestry is rare and not frequently encountered, as the scene of Departing from an Inn is an original subject solely found on Teniers tapestries from the workshop of Franz Van der Borcht, whereas other Teniers scenes were used by numerous Brussels workshops. There is another example, slightly wider, in the Imperial Court Collection at Vienna.

Reference

H.C. Marillier, Teniers Tapestries, Oxford University Press, London, 1932, page 54, plate 42a.