to have been painted by the artist. He was extremely versatile and tried his hand at all the genres then practised in Flanders including history, genre, landscape, portrait and still life. Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene and scenes with alchemists and physicians. He also painted many religious scenes among which stand out his many compositions treating the subjects of the Temptation of St Anthony and hermit saints in grottoes or deserts. Evolution Teniers's early works show the influence of Elsheimer. This influence was transmitted to him through his father, who had studied under Elsheimer in Rome and is regarded as a follower of Elsheimer. Elsheimer was mainly known for his small cabinet paintings characterised by their innovative treatment of landscape and light effects. Another major influence on David Teniers the Younger's early work was the work of the Flemish painter Adriaen Brouwer. Adriaen Brouwer was working in Antwerp from the mid 1620s to the mid 1630s after an extended residence in Haarlem. He was an important innovator of genre painting through his vivid depictions of peasants, soldiers and other 'lower class' individuals, whom he showed engaged in drinking, smoking, card or dice playing, fighting, music making etc. usually in taverns or rustic settings. Brouwer also contributed to the development of the genre of tronies, i.e. head or facial studies, which investigate varieties of expression. Teniers's early work up to the end of the thirties was very close to that of Brouwer in terms of subject matter, technique, color and composition. He took from Brouwer the gross types, placed in the characteristic smoky, dimly lit taverns. He also treated these subjects with the same monochrome tonality as Brouwer. The personal style of Teniers was visible from the outset. An important distinction was that unlike Brouwer who placed these genre scenes mainly indoors, Teniers gradually moved his scenes into the open air and started to give the landscape a major place in his work from the 1640s. This was a common development in Flemish painting at the time. The smoky and monochrome tonality of the interiors from the 1630s was replaced by a luminous, silvery atmosphere, in which the peasants sit at their ease, conversing or playing cards. These paintings show a radical move towards a more positive attitude towards country life and the peasantry than was reflected in his earlier satirical pieces influenced by