leanings. Shortly after the death of his wife in 1656 he married Isabella de Fren, daughter of the secretary of the council of Brabant, and strove his utmost to prove his right to armorial bearings. In a petition to the king he reminded him that the honour of knighthood had been bestowed upon Rubens and Van Dyck. The king at last declared his readiness to grant the request, but on the express condition that Teniers should give up selling his pictures. The condition was not complied with; but it may perhaps account for the master’s activity in favour of the foundation in Antwerp of an academy of fine arts to which only painters and sculptors should be admitted, whereas the venerable gild of St Luke made no difference between art and handicraft: carvers, gilders, bookbinders, stood on an even footing with painters and sculptors: the separation was not obtained till 1773. There were great rejoicings in Antwerp when, on the 26th of January 1663, Teniers came from Brussels with the royal charter of the academy, the existence of which was due entirely to his personal initiative.
Teniers died in Brussels on the 25th of April 1690. The date is often wrongly given as 1694 or 1695. A picture in the Munich Gallery (No. 906), dated 1680, represents him as an alchemist, oppressed with a burden of age beyond his years. From this date we hear more of his doings as a picture-dealer than as a painter, which most probably gave birth to the legend of his having given himself out as deceased in order to get higher prices for his works. David, his eldest son, a painter of talent and reputation, died in 1685. One of this third Teniers’s pictures—“St Dominic Kneeling before the Blessed Virgin,” dated 1666—is still to be found in the church at Perck. As well as his father, he contributed many patterns to the celebrated Brussels tapestry looms.
Smith’s Catalogue Raisonné gives descriptions of over 900 paintings accepted as original productions of Teniers. Few artists ever worked with greater ease, and some of his smaller pictures—landscapes with figures—have been termed “afternoons,” not from their subjects, but from the time spent in producing them. The museums in Madrid, St Petersburg, Vienna, Munich, Dresden, Paris, London and Brussels have more than 200 pictures by Teniers. In the United Kingdom 150 may be found in private hands, and many other examples are to be met with in private collections throughout Europe. Although the spirit of many of these works is as a whole marvellous, their conscientiousness must be regarded as questionable. Especially in the later productions, from 1654 onwards we often detect a lack of earnestness and of the calm and concentrated study of nature which alone prevent expression from degenerating into grimace in situations like those generally depicted by Teniers. His education, and still more his real and assumed position in society, to a great degree account for this. Brouwer knew more of taverns; Ostade was more thoroughly at home in cottages and humble dwellings; Teniers, throughout, triumphs in broad daylight, and, though many of his interiors may be justly termed masterpieces, they seldom equal his open-air scenes, where he has, without constraint, given full play to the bright resources of his luminous palette. In this respect he often suggests comparisons with Natteau. But his subjects taken from the Gospels or sacred legend are absurd. An admirable picture in the Louvre shows “Peter Denying his Master” next to a table where soldiers are smoking and having a game at cards. A similar example is the “Deliverance of St Peter from Prison” of which two versions, curiously altered, are in the Dresden Gallery and the Wallace Collection. He likes going back to subjects illustrated two centuries before by Jerome Bosch—the “Temptation of St Anthony,” the “Rich Man in Hell,” incantations and witches for the simple purpose of assembling the most comic apparitions. His villagers drink, play bowls, dance and sing; they seldom quarrel or tight, and, if they do, seem to be shamming. This much may be said of Teniers, that no painter shows a more enviable ability to render a conception to his own and other people’s satisfaction. His works have a technical freshness, a straightforwardness in means and intent, which make the study of them most delightful; as Sir Joshua Reynolds says, they are worthy of the closest attention of any painter who desires to excel in the mechanical knowledge of his art.
As an etcher Teniers compares very unfavourably with Ostade, Cornelis, Bega and Dusart. More than 500 plates were made from his pictures; and, if it be true that Louis XIV. judged his “baboons” (magots) unworthy of a place in the royal collections, they found admirable engravers in France-Le Bas and his scholars—and passionate admirers. The duke of Bedford’s admirable specimen was sold for 18,030 livres (£1860) in 1768. The “Prodigal Son,” now in the Louvre. fetched 30,000 livres (£3095) in 1776. Smith’s highest estimates have long since been greatly exceeded. The “Archers” in St Petersburg he gives as worth £2000. The Belgian government gave £5000 in 1867; for the “Village Pastoral” of 1652, which is now in the Brussels Museum; and a picture of the “Prodigal Son,” scarcely 16 by 28 inches, fetched £5280 in 1876.
Although van Tilborgh, who was a scholar of Teniers in Brussels, followed his style with some success, and later painters often excelled in figure-painting on a small scale, Teniers cannot be said to have formed a school. Properly speaking, he is the last representative of the great Flemish traditions of the 17th century.
See T. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters; John Vermoelen, Notice historique sur David Teniers et sa famille; L. Galesloot, Quelques renseignements sur la famille de P. P. Rubens et le décès de David Teniers and Un procès de David Teniers et la corporation des peintres à Bruxelles; Alph. Wauters, Histoire des environs de Bruxelles and Les tapisseries bruxelloises; F. T. Van der Brandern, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche Schilderschool; Max Rooses, Geschichte der Malerschule Antwerpens; W. Bode, Adriaen Brouwer, ein Bild seines Lebens und seines Schaffens. (H. H.; P. G. K.)
TENISON, THOMAS (1636–1715), English archbishop, was
born at Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, on the 29th of September
1636. He was educated at the free school, Norwich, whence
he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, as a scholar on
Archbishop Parker’s foundation. He graduated in 1657, and
was chosen fellow in 1659. For a short time he studied medicine,
but in 1659 was privately ordained. As vicar of St Andrew-the-Great, Cambridge, he was conspicuous for his devoted
attention to the sufferers from the plague. In 1667 he was
presented to the living of Holywell-cum-Needingworth, Huntingdonshire, by the earl of Manchester, to whose son he had been
tutor, and in 1670 to that of St Peter’s Mancroft, Norwich. In
1680 he received the degree of D.D., and was presented by
Charles II. to the important cure of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields.
Tenison, according to Gilbert Burnet, “endowed schools, set
up a public library, and kept many curates to assist him in his
indefatigable labours.” Being a strenuous opponent of the
Church of Rome, and “Whitehall lying within that parish, he
stood as in the front of the battle all King James’s reign.” In
1678, in a Discourse of Idolatry, he had endeavoured to fasten
the practices of heathenish idolatry on the Church of Rome,
and in a sermon which he published in 1681 on Discretion in
Giving Alms was attacked by Andrew Pulton, head of the
Jesuits in the Savoy. Tenison’s reputation as an enemy of
Romanism led the duke of Monmouth to send for him before
his execution in 1685, when Bishops Ken and Turner refused
to administer the Eucharist; but, although Tenison spoke to
him in “a softer and less peremptory manner” than the two
bishops, he was, like them, not satisfied with the sufficiency
of Monmouth’s penitence. Under William III., Tenison was in
1689 named a member of the ecclesiastical commission appointed
to prepare matters towards a reconciliation of the Dissenters,
the revision of the liturgy being, specially entrusted to him. A
sermon which he preached on the commission was published
the same year. He preached a funeral sermon on Nell Gwyn
(d. 1687) in which he represented her as truly penitent—a
charitable judgment which did not meet with universal approval.
The general liberality of Tenison’s religious views commended
him to the royal favour, and, after being made bishop of Lincoln
in 1691, he was promoted to the primacy in December 1694.
He attended Queen Mary during her last illness and preached
her funeral sermon in Westminster Abbey. When William in
1695 went to take command of the army in the Netherlands,
Tenison was appointed one of the seven lords justices to whom
his authority was delegated. Along with Burnet he attended
the king on his death-bed. He crowned Queen Anne, but
during her reign was not in much favour at court. He was a
commissioner for the Union with Scotland in 1706. A strong
supporter of the Hanoverian succession, he was one of the three
officers of state to whom on the death of Anne was entrusted
the duty of appointing a regent till the arrival of George I.,
whom he crowned on the 31st of October 1714. Tenison died
at London on the 14th of December 1715.
Besides the sermons and tracts above mentioned, and various others on the “Popish” controversy, Tenison was the author of The Creed of Mr Hobbes Examined (1670) and Baconia, or Certain
