Artwork
Monkeys smoking and drinking
Monkeys smoking and drinking is an oil painting by the Flemish Baroque painting artist David Teniers the Younger. It dates from 1660 and is held in the collection of the Museo del Prado.
About this work
Overview
The canvas presents a small gathering of monkeys, each dressed in elaborate attire, arranged around a table as if partaking in a convivial evening.
David Teniers the Younger painted this oil work in 1660, now part of the collection at Madrid’s Museo del Prado. The canvas presents a small gathering of monkeys, each dressed in elaborate attire, arranged around a table as if partaking in a convivial evening. The scene combines everyday objects—a candle, a glass, a deck of cards—with the absurdity of animal participants, creating a witty tableau that reflects the artist’s penchant for genre scenes.
Subject & Meaning
The monkeys are portrayed mimicking human leisure: one inhales from a pipe, another lifts a glass to its lips, while a third handles a playing card. Their anthropomorphic behavior satirizes the follies of excess and social rituals, a common motif in 17th‑century Flemish painting where animals often serve as moralizing stand‑ins for human vice.
Technique & Style
Executed in oil, Teniers employs a relatively heavy application of paint, especially on the fur, producing a tactile impasto that suggests the texture of animal coats. The brushwork remains controlled yet lively, allowing the clothing’s folds and the reflective surfaces of the glass and candle to be rendered with clarity while the background recedes into muted, rough stone.
History & Provenance
Created toward the end of Teniers’s career, the painting entered the Spanish royal collection before being transferred to the Prado Museum, where it remains on display. Its provenance reflects the artist’s popularity among European courts, who valued his genre scenes for both their decorative appeal and their subtle moral commentary.
Context
In the mid‑17th century, Flemish artists frequently used animal subjects to comment on human behavior, a tradition traceable to earlier Netherlandish works. Teniers’s choice of monkeys—symbols of mimicry—aligns with contemporary allegorical conventions, while the setting of a dimly lit interior echoes the intimate genre interiors popular in Dutch and Flemish art of the period.
Artist & collection
Artist
David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, and artist.
