2 So many alchemists, so little time

 

In the age of the all distracting internet, one has stopped having patience for more than.... Well, I let everyone decide on that him-or herself. Fact is one cannot gaze at a painting forever, AND have new thoughts about it each time. So after VVG's harvest yellow, it was time for a more brownish gloom in our bathroom. Those tones typical of the paintings by the Belgian artist David Teniers, the Younger (1610-1690). Never heard of, right? Me neither. Strangely when we tried to find this very painting called "The Alchemist's Laboratory" we could not find it anywhere on google. CLICK to ZOOM. There are loads of alchemist paintings  by him and others, very similar ones, even one in the same room and set up, yet the alchemist on that other one, called "Alchemist on his workshop" has the big book right in front of him and his beard is much greyer; there is a parrot on the loose while here we see a pigeon out of its cage. (check out www.useum.org for comparison). The great thing with these paintings are that there is a lot to see, many lovely details, and if you get into looking at more and more of them, they all contain the same details and number of people. Anyway, the distance from our loo to the wall across is not much, but too wide where reading glass won't help, and my distance glasses are no longer in use, so my vision sees things a bit blurry. But the light coming in from the large window in the chemist's lab certainly makes the big table a place where I would want to work, too. Interestingly on this sheet of paper from some art magazine, the provenance of the work is mentioned below, and still we could not find it listed online after we got off the can. Originally with the Spanish Royal collection, after a few stations it ended up with "Christie's" where it was sold in 1951 to the Dutch art dealer house Hoogendijk in Amsterdam. They supposedly went bust in 1967. Where is our Alchemist since then? Hmm....