(Brussels circa 1625 – circa 1678)
A company feasting outside a tavern,
signed with monogram lower right: TB,
oil on canvas, 197.5 x 267.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 8 July 1992, lot 64;
where acquired by the present owner

The present monumental canvas depicting a sun-drenched and merry feast outside a well-appointed house ranks among the most significant works by the Bruxellois master Gillis van Tilborgh the Younger. Group portraits were a specialty of van Tilborgh, as well as his inventive tavern and interior scenes; although the present painting appears to be an imaginary rather than the actual portrayal of an extended family at a celebratory luncheon, the manner in which the multitude of figures are arranged in distinct huddles throughout the picture space, shows van the artist’s mastery of all these genres.

The careful use of light to model the many forms, from the verdant trees, peeling plaster-work and brick facade of the building in the background, to the behatted gentlemen, playing children and, apron-clad women in the foreground, is indicative of the style of van Tilborgh’s master, David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690). Arguably, the artist’s palette here is perhaps even more brilliant than those found in the works of his master. The still life details of the clay pots, brass pans and wooden chairs finely balance the exuberance of the scene.

Gillis van Tilborgh II enjoyed a long artistic career in Flanders and England, and his mature period, after completing his training with his father, Gillis van Tilborgh the Elder, and then with Teniers, ranges from the 1650–70s. The present work may be dated broadly to these two decades. Presumably through the influence of Teniers, van Tilborgh received important commissions from the gentry and aristocracy of Flanders’s capital and was appointed keeper of the painting collection amassed by the Habsburg governor of the Southern Netherlands Archduke Leopold Wilhelm.

Van Tilborgh is recorded in England in 1670, where he depicted a similarly festive scene of almsgiving at Tichborne House, Hampshire, the so-called Tichborne Dole. Perhaps art historically most interesting of his works are the so-called ‘gallery paintings’ where van Tilborgh recorded the collections of important patrons of the arts, in the manner of Teniers, who pioneered this genre. However, large-multifigural compositions such as the present were also popular, and the current canvas could even be compared, for sheer invention and human liveliness, to van Tilborgh’s celebrated Guardroom, conserved in The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg.