Adriaan Brouwer

In tune with the continuing late golden weather, [Indian summer indeed though, alas, attributable to global warming.] on Tuesday October 16^th I had a lovely sunlit day out in Oudenarde with a friend. The energy ran out unfortunately before we had time to explore the town but the Grote Markt was a delight which welcomes the visitor. The journey took longer than I had expected and we needed an immediate coffee, located at one of the cafes on the sunny Markt, before embarking on the purpose of our visit: to see the exhibition on Adriaan Brouwer: Master of Emotions. Publicised as in the Mou Museum, we discovered that meant it was in the truly handsome 17^th century Stadhuis which houses the town museum. The exterior of the Stadhuis is beautiful, surely one of the most intricate and ornamental in the whole of Belgium. What impressed inside was the stylish and effective way the huge old building has been skilfully adapted to house the Museum and exhibition spaces. It is exemplary.

I am rather embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of Adriaan [also spelled as Adriaen] Brouwer but now, I am becoming an A.B. bore! He was born between 1603 and 1605 in Oudenarde, the son of a draughtsman for tapestry cartoons, a thriving industry in the town from 1368. In 1622 he moved to Antwerp and was influenced by both Pieter 11 Breughel and Frans Hals,

The Smokers.

The main figure is generally reckoned to be

Adriaan Bouwer

in one of his favourite settings.

the latter of whom he is often reputed to have been a pupil though no definite proof has emerged. By 1631 Adriaan, after living in Harlem, was back in Antwerp where he was imprisoned at one point; perhaps by the Spanish for espionage; perhaps for high levels of debt. He died in poverty in 1638 and his body was originally thrown into a communal plague pit but was soon rescued by one of his fellow artists and an admirer, Rubens, and given full burial honours in the Carmelite Church in Antwerp.

The exhibition of almost half of his known works of 60, on loan from the U.S, Europe and the U.K., traces his short but brilliant career. In fact, he became famous for his genre paintings with his work depicting, almost exclusively, low life in bars or among peasants and farmers, card players, smokers and drinkers [when tobacco was a fairly new phenomenon and very popular]. He seems to have been comfortable in such company and never painted aristocratic groups or scenes which will, inevitably, have limited his market. However his work was collected by fashionable and gifted contemporaries like Rubens, Rembrandt and Teniers. He can be seen, in retrospect, as an important transitional figure bridging the sixteenth century Brueghel tradition and the landscape and genre scenes of the seventeenth. He did, in fact, move to painting landscapes towards the end of his life.

My personal reaction to his work in the exhibition was strong; I love his faces particularly and the humour of the situations he portrays. His groups are full of assorted rough-hewn mediaeval faces and the scenes are vibrant and wholly alive as the assorted actors leer, talk, flirt, drink too much, fight and quarrel, jeer and sing. The painter shows himself as a genial lover of the company of ordinary people with their foibles and their rough and ready lives. There is always an air of everyday low life about his scenes, skilfully portrayed in the minimum, targeted strokes of genius! Brouwer was, above all, an expert at conveying emotions and moods, sometimes including grotesque features in the pursuit of truth.