512 Painting

of touch — every dash of his brush being full of meaning and character, harmonious balance of grouping, delicacy of execution of details, arid spirited arrangement of figures ; and a keen and irrepressible spirit of humour breaking out at every turn. No rank, however elevated, was safe from his satire : the guard-house and castle, the philoso- pher's study, the cell of the saint, were all vividly por- trayed ; and it cannot be denied that the master's intense love of truth at all costs led him sometimes into coarseness and vulgarity, and that he evidently revelled in the repre- sentation of physical misery and discomfort. Teniers is well represented in the National Gallery, which contains, amongst fifteen works, the well-known Players at Tric-trac or Backgammon, Boors regaling, an Old Woman Peeling a Pear, his own Chateau at Perch, and the Fete aux Chaudrons, with several other genre pictures and landscapes. Of his works on the Continent, the following are among the most remarkable : — a Guard Room, with Peter denying Christ in the background, in the Louvre ; a Peasant Wedding, in the Belvedere, Vienna ; the Tempta- tion of S. Anthony, in the Berlin Museum ; the great Italian Fair, measuring three yards by four, a Drinking Party, and a Monkey-and-Cat Concert, all in the Pina- kothek, Munich ; the Sacrifice of Isaac, in the Belvedere. Vienna; the magnificent Fete de Sablons, in the gallery of the Archduke Leopold ; and in the Buda-Pesth Gallery the Seven Works of Mercy, three Temptations, and the King drinking, a charming table scene; and several Festivals, amongst which there is one dated 1637, of extraordinary size and wonderful -colouring ; and the twelve pictures of the same size illustrating the story of Rinaldo and Armida, all in the Madrid Gallery.