David Teniers the Elder - AN EXTENSIVE RIVER LANDSCAPE WITH MERCURY AND ARGUS

 

David Teniers the Elder

ANTWERP 1582 - 1649

AN EXTENSIVE RIVER LANDSCAPE WITH MERCURY AND ARGUS

signed lower centre: DAVID. TENIERS
oil on oak panel
43.8 by 68.5 cm.; 17 1/4 by 27 in. 

This is a relatively late work by David Teniers the Elder. It shares the same figure group as his 1638-dated depiction of the same subject in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.1  In this latter Mercury is perhaps a little older and larger as compared with the soporific Argus who however is reproduced in the same pose though with his right leg tucked under his left. Both works include the same white heifer (Io). The overall composition, with a figure group tucked in tightly beneath a group of trees at the far left, on a rise overlooking a wide valley dotted with cows and sheep, recalls the Landscape with the Judgement of Paris in a Swedish private collection.2

1. See E. Duverger, H. Vlieghe, David Teniers der Ältere, Utrecht 1971, reproduced fig. 42.
2. Ibid., fig. 33.