The Guard-Room
1640 - 1650. Oil on copperplate.Not on display
The foreground display of numerous military elements, banners, drums, cuirasses and weapons, leads to a genre painting showing some soldiers resting in the background. On the left of the composition, one of the pages works to hang up the soldiers' clothes. Here, as in his other works, Teniers shows his capacity to use light to achieve a perfect representation of the qualities of the objects depicted. At the same time, the semidarkness in most of the room relates this composition to the artist's habitual indoor scenes, which offer a very realistic view of everyday life in Flanders. There are several versions of this work, and some of its figures, including the page, are used by the author in other similar works, as well. This version was documented as part of Carlos IV's collection in the Casita del Príncipe at El Escorial in the late eighteenth century.