Brick-making near Hemiksem

This painting is unusual in the output of Flemish painter David Teniers the Younger (1610-90) as it records a particular view, rather than a generic one. On the left horizon is the church of the Cistercian abbey of St Bernard at Hemiksem, Belgium. The brickyard, in the centre of the painting, was one of the earliest in the Netherlands, established by the abbey in the thirteenth century. The painting contains a hive of activity, each figure contributing to the running of the brickworks. Some dig clay from the earth, which others transport using wheelbarrows. Next to the long open-sided thatched building (the drying store) the brick-maker can be seen at his bench, while workers lay out recently moulded bricks to dry in the sun.

Teniers was one of the most celebrated painters of rural life during and after his lifetime. The specificity of this view suggests that this painting was made by Teniers on commission for a patron. In 1662, Teniers purchased a country house called Drij Toren (‘Three Towers’) which was not far from the brickworks represented here. Born and trained in Antwerp, and later working for the King of Spain, the Prince of Orange and the Governor of the Netherlands, the acquisition of the estate at Drij Toren served as a marker of the artist's success.