Biography

David Teniers the Elder (David I) was a Flemish Late Mannerist painter, mainly of religious subjects, who worked in Antwerp. He may have been associated with Rubens before going to Rome, where he worked in the Elsheimer circle, c. 1600-05. He became a master in Antwerp in 1606, but was constantly in debt and was active mainly as a dealer in his last years. The working lives of David the Elder and his son David the Younger (David II) - by far the most famous of the family - overlapped in the 1630s, and it is not clear who painted certain pictures in that period; what is clear that many of the paintings ascribed to David I in the 19th century are by David II.