is as a whole marvellous, their conscientiousness must be regarded as questionable. Especially in the later productions 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, as in many others, he almost invariably suggests comparisons with Watteau. Equally sparkling and equally joyous, both seem to live in an almost ideal world, where toil, disease, and poverty may exist, but to be soon forgotten, and where sunshine seems everlasting. 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. 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 fight, and, if they do, seem to be shamming. His powers certainly declined with advancing age; the works of 1654 begin to look hasty. But this much may be said of Teniers, that no other 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 procés de David Teniers et la corporation des peintres à Bruxelles; Alph. Wanters, Histoire des environs de Bruxelles and Les tapisseries bruxelloises; F. T. Van der Brandern, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche Schildersohool; Max Rooses, Geschichte der Malerschule Antwerpens; W. Bode, Adriaen Brouwer, ein Bild seins Lebens und seines Schaffens.(H. H.)
TENIMBER. See Timor Laut.
TENISON, Thomas (1636–1715), archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of Rev. John Tenison, rector of Mundsley, Norfolk, by Mary, daughter of Thomas Dowson of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, where he was born on 29th 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 B.A. in 1657, M.A. in 1660, was chosen fellow in 1662, and became B.D. in 1667. For a short time he studied medicine, but in 1659 was privately ordained. 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 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 Catholicism 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, 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 appears to have been better satisfied with the religious sentiments of Nell Gwynn on the approach of death than with those of the duke of Monmouth, for in 1691 he preached her funeral sermon, 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 favour of William, and, after being made bishop of Lincoln in 1691, he was promoted to the primacy in December 1694. He attended 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 William on his deathbed, and it was from their hands that he received the Eucharist. He crowned Queen Anne, but during her reign was not in much favour at court. He was a commissioner for the Union 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 31st October 1714. Tenison died at London on 14th December of the following year. Besides the sermons and tracts above mentioned, and various others on different points of the Popish controversy, Tenison was the author of The Creed of Mr Hobbes examined (1670) and Baconia, or Certain Genuine Remains of Lord Bacon (1679).
The Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Most Rev. Father in God, Dr Thomas Tenison, late Archbishop of Canterbury, appeared without date not long after his death. See also Burnet’s History of his own Time and Macaulay’s History of England.
