_Adrian Brouwer_ (Dutch-Flemish: 1605-1638).
Brouwer, Flemish by birth, Dutch by adoption, rivalled his
contemporary, the younger Teniers, as a genre painter. His
realism is as humorous as it is vigorous. His pictures, says
M. Havard, "are marvels of arrangement and colouring. They
are sober in conception, and exhibit exquisite modelling,
remarkable softness, and light and shade full of transparency
and truthfulness; qualities which, during his lifetime,
obtained for Brouwer the admiration of his brother-artists
and the enthusiasm of Rubens," who, as is known from extant
documents, possessed several of his pictures. His portrait was
painted by Van Dyck to be placed in a collection of the most
celebrated portrait-painters.
Brouwer led an exciting life, and has been the subject of
several biographies, which have alternately covered him with
scandal and whitewashed him. Documents unearthed during recent
years support the earlier accounts, which represent this
painter of topers as a jovial, reckless, dissipated Bohemian;
though his epitaph may yet have partly told truth in describing
him as "a man of great mind, who rejected every splendour of
the world, and who despised gain and riches." The documents
are set out by Wurzbach (_Niederländisches Künstler-Lexicon_,
1906). Taking all the evidence together, we may picture Brouwer
as a genial fellow, fond of adventure, slow in setting to
work, quick in spending, inclined to libertinism and drink,
constantly running into debt, a sworn foe of shams and parade,
fond of his joke, a lover of poetry, and popular among all who
knew him. One of the stories told of him well illustrates
his mocking contempt of fashionable vanities. At Amsterdam
he had bought himself some coarse linen, which he had made
up into a fashionable suit and then painted with a flowered
pattern. Brouwer's costume became the talk of the town, and
shops were ransacked to furnish copies of it; till one night
at the theatre, the artist jumped on to the stage, wiped off
his pattern with a wet cloth, and laughed at his audience.
He was born at Oudenarde, ran away from home, had exciting
adventures on the way, and turned up in Amsterdam and Haarlem.
He is said to have entered the studio of Frans Hals, and to
have been very badly treated there. He is known to have been an
artist of repute, moving also in literary circles, in Amsterdam
and Haarlem, 1625-27. He is next heard of at Antwerp, where
in 1631-32 he was admitted into the Painters' Guild. Three
years later he became a member of the section of the Guild
for exercising rhetoric. He was cast into the state prison,
probably on suspicion of espionage; and during the seven months
of his incarceration, succeeded in running up new debts to
the extent of £400--a feat which may be explained by the fact
that the prison amenities included an excellent wine-tavern.
He died--of his dissipations, according to some, but quite
as probably of the plague--and was buried in the cemetery,
and afterwards in the Convent Church of the Carmelites. His
pictures are rare. The Wallace Collection, the Victoria and
Albert Museum (Ionides Collection), and the Dulwich Gallery
have each one good example. It has been suggested that the
Landscape, No. 72 in our Gallery, hitherto attributed to
Rembrandt, is by Brouwer.