David Teniers II, Flemish, 1610-1690
Title: Hustle-cap
Date: late 1660s
Medium: Oil on oak panel
Dimensions:
23 x 33.6 cm
Signed: lower right: D. Teniers Fec
Credit Line: Purchased, 1864
Object Number: NGI.23
Provenance1854, Viscount Harberton, Rathangan House, County Kildare; purchased, Viscount Harberton sale, Phillips ,London, 19 April 1864, lot 32
Exhibition HistoryCentenary Exhibition, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, October - December 1964
Label TextA group of peasants have come together to play ‘hustle-cap’, a game in which players had to guess which way coins, shaken (‘hustled’) in a cap and thrown, would land. The person who guessed correctly won the money. The depiction of the men as boorish caricatures gives the painting a comical tone. Teniers was a Flemish artist, best known for his large oeuvre of peasant scenes, which earned him not only great fame in- and outside Antwerp, but also a number of socially prominent positions of authority.