An artist in his studio

Gillis van Tilborgh was one of the most important genre painters in the Southern Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Following his training with David Teniers II, whose scenes of peasant life proved influential on the artist’s own paintings, van Tilborgh became a member of the Brussels painters guild in 1654. In 1666, he was appointed keeper of the picture collection in Tervuren Castle, near Brussels. It appears likely that this life event induced him to paint mostly collectors’ cabinets from that point on, works on which his reputation chiefly rests today. Several years later he appears to have made a trip to England before returning to his native Brussels.

As noted in the catalogue to the exhibition Over het genot van de zintuigen in de schilderkunst,the conception of the present painting is notably similar to van Tilborgh’s approach to the interiors of his Kunstkammern. There, the painting was viewed as an allegory of the Five Senses, which were from an early date associated with collectors’ cabinets (op. cit., p. 50). Sight may be symbolized by the seated woman looking at the still life, Hearing by the lute on the table, Smell by the flowers and still life, Touch by the amorous young couple at right and Taste by the page pouring wine at left. It is equally plausible that the painting once formed part of a series of allegorical representations of the Five Senses. It is, for example, particularly close in conception and scale to the artist’s Interior with a Music Party, today in the collection of The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, which may have functioned as an allegory of Hearing in such a series.