Provenance

George Augustus Henry Cavendish, 1st Earl of Burlington

Burlington George Augustus Henry, 1st Earl of

British, 1754 - 1834

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A pale-skinned woman wearing a cream-white dress stands in front of a shadowy landscape in this vertical portrait painting. Facing us, the woman looks directly out with dark gray eyes under gently curving brows. She has a somewhat wide nose, slightly smiling, bow-shaped lips, flushed cheeks, and a pointed chin. Her brown hair is pulled back and up into a loose, tall style. A palm-sized medallion hanging from a gold chain falls low on her chest. The low neckline of the dress, which is pulled around the torso like a wrap dress, is lined in gold. The train of the long skirt is pinned between her crossed ankles and pools behind her feet. She wears white, sandal-inspired shoes wrapped with blue lines. A coat with voluminous sleeves in the same deep white color as the dress falls heavily from her shoulders. She leans her right elbow, to our left, against a squared stone or ledge, and her other hand is planted on her hip. A grassy lawn stretches back to trees framing a muted blue sky in the background behind her. Sunlight glows on the horizon in the distance behind her shoulders, but the rest of the landscape falls into deep shadow.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lady Elizabeth Compton, 1780-1782, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.97

Lady Elizabeth Compton

Sir Joshua Reynolds · 1780-1782 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.97

Three pale-skinned people gather around a wooden table in a dimly lit tavern as a fourth person urinates against a wall in a back room in this horizontal painting. The table is a square board resting on a broken barrel. All three men at the table have prominent, reddened noses set in wide faces, and they wear clothing and hats in tones of spruce blue, olive green, muted purple, gray, or brown. One man sits on the left side of the table, holding a glass of beer with both hands. He wears what might be a furry cap. His face is turned slightly toward us but he looks down and to our right. The other seated man is across from us. He grins widely as he hunches over one forearm and holds the neck of a lidded ceramic jug with his other hand. He has a long, chunky chin and stares out at us from under a prominent brow ridge. The third man here stands behind, holding up a white clay pipe. His mouth is open, his eyes slitted, possibly crossed, and he hunches down. One foot rests on a low wooden box, a foot warmer. Another white clay pipe and the broken bowl of a pipe sit on the table, and another pipe lies by the first man’s feet. Also across the floor are two pots and a stubby broom, the long handle of which lies against a table holding a brass candlestick. A wisp of smoke rises from the wick in the candle stub. A shelf hung on the wall near the upper left corner of the painting holds a glass vessel and perhaps a plate. Two wooden beams line the left edge of the composition, and a cloth is draped over a nail there. The floor and wall are nearly uniform taupe gray. A rectangular doorway opens into the next room, in the top right corner of the painting. There a man stands facing the wall with both hands down in front of his torso. A window is set high in the wall there and the timbered ceiling is visible. The artist signed the lower left corner the painting, “D Teniers f.” The first two digits of the date read “16.”
David Teniers the Younger, Peasants in a Tavern, c. 1633, oil on panel, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Ely Pflieger, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991.140.1

Peasants in a Tavern

David Teniers the Younger · c. 1633 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1991.140.1