Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00009821About the Artwork
David Teniers the Younger was a popular artist who specialized in small paintings of rustic Flemish life in the 1600s. In works such as Peasants Smoking in an Inn, an older man and a younger man in the foreground smoke tobacco. The younger man rests limply against the wall and his head lolls back, a gesture that symbolized that he had overindulged in smoke. Another standing man prepares his pipe and watches the younger man with amusement. Tobacco was a novelty in the 1600s, introduced from the Americas and East Indies with other new imports such as sugar cane and rice, and was believed to be a medicinal product. It was particularly recommended for people who lived in "waterish places" such as Antwerp, the capital of Flanders, where Teniers painted this scene. Although many medical practitioners believed tobacco to be a cure for numerous ailments, moral opponents to smoking criticized it as a danger to health and morals. The mixed reputation and widespread popularity of tobacco smoking thus made it a marketable and amusing subject for Flemish artists such as Teniers.
Inscriptions
signed lower left: D. TENIERS. FEC.
Provenance
Louis de Bourbon-Conde, Comte de Clermont, 1709-1771 (Paris, France); Bought by Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun, died 1813 (Paris, France), 1796 for Richard Codman (Boston, Massachusetts); By inheritance to his son, John Codman, 1755-1803 (Boston, Massachusetts), 1803; By inheritance to his son, Charles R. Codman, 1784-1852 (Boston, Massachusetts), 1852; By inheritance to his son, Richard Codman (Boston, Massachusetts); Sold through Boussod-Valadon to Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade (Gates Mills, Ohio), 1893 [as Interior Public House]; By bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1916.
Exhibition history
The Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 26-October 4, 1936). The Silver Jubilee Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 23-September 28, 1941). Dutch Art and Life in the Seventeenth Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 10-September 2, 1973). Hot Dry Men, Cold Wet Women: The Theory of Humor and Depictions of Men and Women in Western European Art of the 1600s. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE (September 13-November 2, 1997); Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, AR (November 20, 1997-February 6, 1998); John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL (February 27-April 24, 1998).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- David Teniers (Flemish, 1610–1690)
- Date
- c. 1640
- Medium
- oil on wood
- Dimensions
- Framed: 46.5 x 37 x 4 cm (18 5/16 x 14 9/16 x 1 9/16 in.); Unframed: 37.2 x 26.3 cm (14 5/8 x 10 3/8 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade
- Accession no.
- 1916.1046
More by David Teniers in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00009821
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