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ADRIAEN BROUWER [notes]
(Flemish, 1605/06-1638)
Peasants Brawling in a Tavern
Undated
Oil on panel
30 x 25 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
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The greatest tavern roisterer among painters was probably Adriaen Brouwer. A brilliant
raconteur, a gifted impromptu poet and a witty conversationalist, the painter had access
to the literary and affluent mercantile circles of Antwerp. However, the "genius of lowlife"
felt much more at home in taverns because he loved "drinking and licence" as his
biographers tell us. They add that Brouwer "dawdled over painting but was quick
at devouring his victuals". The genre scenes he painted, such as Peasants Brawling
in a Tavern, probably represent firsthand experience. Although he was acclaimed and
well paid for his work as a genre painter during his lifetime, Brouwer's passion for
tavern life proved his undoing. As the story goes, Rubens, who admired the Flemish
painter's work and even owned seventeen of his paintings, once took him in but soon
threw him out again because he could not stand his bawdy ways. Brouwer, an "Adonis in
rags" died at the age of thirty three, possibly of the plague which he concracted in
a tavern.
[Painting List]
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