The bitter drink

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The bitter drink (Adriaen Brouwer)
The bitter drink
Adriaen Brouwer , around 1636–1638
Oil on oak
47.4 x 35.5 cm
Städelsches Kunstinstitut , Frankfurt am Main

The bitter drink , also called bitter medicine , is a painting by the Flemish painter Adriaen Brouwer from around 1636–1638 . The picture, painted in oil on oak, is 47.4 cm high and between 35.2 cm and 35.5 cm wide. It depicts a young farmer who grimaces after consuming a liquid. The actual subject of the picture is the representation of taste as one of the five human senses. The painting has belonged to the collection of the Städel Art Institute in Frankfurt am Main since 1872 .

Image description

The painting shows a portrait of a young farmer in front of a gray-brown background. His head turned to the right edge of the picture appears as a three-quarter view, the body is cropped from the left and lower edge of the picture. He wears a gray-brown jacket that appears dirty or worn in some places. In the upper area it is held together by three buttons. A white shirt that is already "grayish dirty" peeks out from under the jacket on the collar, sleeves and stomach. He wears a dark brown cap on his head, under which his shaggy black hair falls down and covers his ears. A short growth of beard can be seen around the mouth and on the side of the face. The art historian Agnes Tieze describes the appearance of the young farmer as "unkempt".

The young man is holding a glass bottle in his right hand in front of his chest, and the fingers of his left hand are holding a ceramic drinking bowl. Such drinking bowls have usually been used for medicine, so that a medicine as a bottle content is likely. The look on the man's face, with narrowed eyes and wide open mouth, shows that he has just drunk the medicine. He may be taking a deep breath or screaming displeasure. For Agnes Tieze the face shows "sensual discomfort", the Berlin museum director Wilhelm von Bode described the facial expression as "a terrible grimace". Bode also criticized: “The way of painting is too petty for the size, the application of paint is too dry.” This way of painting was later praised as a “loose brushstroke” that is suitable for emphasizing facial expression. The painting is labeled "AB" on the upper right.

The taste as a subject

Adriaen Brouwer is known for his depiction of farm and inn scenes. Such mostly hearty genre scenes enjoyed a certain popularity among urban society during the painter's lifetime. Brouwer's repertoire includes topics such as smoking societies, operating scenes, or scuffling tavern visitors. He repeatedly showed people with rough facial expressions, for example in the painting Boy Making a Grimace ( National Gallery of Art , Washington, DC). The model for the depiction of a man with his mouth wide open could have been the picture Yawning Man by Pieter Bruegel the Elder . Brouwer may have seen the painting in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp or knew it from an engraving after the painting by Lucas Vorsterman . In both pictures by Rubens and Brouwer, genre scenes are not the actual theme, but the representation of a single affect. In The Bitter Drink , Brouwer describes the reaction on the man's face caused by the medicine he has taken - the bad taste is made clear by the expression on his face.

The sensual perceptions of seeing, tasting, feeling, hearing and smelling have repeatedly been taken up as a subject in Dutch art. In the 16th century, the five senses mostly appeared as a graphic sequence of images; at the beginning of the 17th century, such image cycles can also be found in painting. Sensory perception did not necessarily have to be implemented as a sequence of images; individual senses also appear as an independent motif. In Der bitter Trank Brouwer took up the sense of taste as the subject of the picture. This was usually portrayed as the enjoyment of tasty food, the bad taste is “a completely new and idiosyncratic subject”.

  • Adriaen Brouwer:
    Boy makes a grimace
    around 1632-1635

  • Pieter Breughel the Elder Ä .:
    Yawning man
    engraving by Lucas Vorsterman

Provenance

The earliest reliable evidence of the painting The Bitter Drink dates back to 1777, when it was auctioned on 23 September with the Jacques Clemens collection at the Gimblet & Frères dealer in Ghent . The picture was probably unsold because it was offered again at Gimblet & Frères on June 21, 1779 as part of the Jacques Clemens collection. The painting was then put on the English art market: in 1821 it was auctioned in London with the John Webb Collection, in 1831 it was part of the George James Cholmondeley Collection, in 1848 it was part of the Edward William Lake Collection and in 1851 it was sold to Christie's with the William Theobald collection auctioned. In 1872 the London art dealer Farrer offered the painting, from which the later Städel inspector Georg Kohlbacher initially acquired it for the Frankfurter Kunstverein . On April 11, 1872, the picture finally entered the collection of the Städel Art Institute for 2,000 guilders .

literature

  • Wilhelm von Bode: Adriaen Brouwer, his life and his works . Euphorion Verlag, Berlin 1924.
  • Jeroen Giltaij (Ed.), Peter Hecht: Senses and sins: Dutch painters of daily life in the seventeenth century . Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1523-1 .
  • Eugen Holländer: Catalog for the exhibition of the history of medicine in arts and crafts , Enke, Stuttgart 1906.
  • Städelsches Kunstinstitut and Städtische Galerie (ed.): Directory of paintings . Städelsches Kunstinstitut and Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main 1987.
  • Agnes Tieze: Flemish paintings in the Städel Museum 1550–1800 . Imhof, Petersberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86568-195-9 .
  • Konrad Renger: Adriaen Brouwer and the Dutch peasant genre 1600–1660 . Hirmer, Munich 1986, ISBN 978-3-7774-4130-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ German title according to the Städelsches Kunstinstitut and Städtische Galerie: Directory of Paintings , p. 34.
  2. ^ Eugen Holländer: Catalog for the exhibition of the history of medicine in arts and crafts , p. 199.
  3. ↑ The image carrier is a two-part oak panel, which is trimmed at the left and lower edge of the image. See Agnes Tieze: Flemish Paintings in the Städel Museum 1550–1800 p. 101.
  4. ↑ The painting is 35.5 cm wide at the top and 35.2 cm at the bottom. See Agnes Tieze: Flemish Paintings in the Städel Museum 1550–1800 p. 101.
  5. ↑ a b Agnes Tieze: Flemish Paintings in the Städel Museum 1550–1800 p. 109.
  6. ↑ a b c d Agnes Tieze: Flemish Paintings in the Städel Museum 1550–1800 p. 101.
  7. ↑ Agnes Tieze has pointed out that larger bowls were usually used for alcohol. See Agnes Tieze: Flemish Paintings in the Städel Museum 1550–1800 p. 109. Deviating from this, Wilhelm von Bode assumed that it could be bad schnapps. See Wilhelm von Bode: Adriaen Brouwer, his life and works , p. 175.
  8. ^ A b Wilhelm von Bode: Adriaen Brouwer, his life and his works , p. 175.
  9. ↑ See notes on the painting on the website of the Städel Museum.
  10. ↑ Städelsches Kunstinstitut and Städtische Galerie: Directory of Paintings , p. 34.
  11. ↑ a b Konrad Renger: Adriaen Brouwer and the Dutch peasant genre 1600–1660 , p. 41.
  12. ^ Konrad Renger: Adriaen Brouwer and the Dutch peasant genre 1600–1660 , p. 39
  13. ↑ Jeroen Giltaij (ed.), Peter Hecht: Senses and sins: Dutch painters of daily life in the seventeenth century , p. 114.