Where can I see Landscape with Bowlers?

Landscape with Bowlers is held by Gemäldegalerie Berlin.

What movement is Landscape with Bowlers?

Landscape with Bowlers is associated with Dutch Golden Age.

Artwork

Landscape with Bowlers

Landscape with Bowlers is an oil painting by the Dutch Golden Age artist Adriaen Brouwer. It dates from 1635 and is held in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Berlin.

About this work

Subject & Meaning

The scene combines a simple recreational activity with symbolic undertones of idleness and social disorder, reflecting contemporary moral anxieties.

The painting shows a group of men engaged in a game of bowls within a rustic landscape, suggesting a moralizing commentary on leisure and vice common in 17th-century Dutch art. The scene combines a simple recreational activity with symbolic undertones of idleness and social disorder, reflecting contemporary moral anxieties. Rendered in oil on oak panel, the work measures 24.8 cm by 33.9 cm and is housed in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, where it was acquired through the collections of Wilhelm von Bode, Maurice Kann, and William Wells.

Technique & Style

Landscape with Bowlers is an oil painting on an oak panel support, measuring 24.8 cm high by 33.9 cm wide and dated to 1635. The work is classified as a landscape genre painting, although some sources also describe its subject matter under religious art. The medium consists of oil paint applied to a prepared oak panel, a common support for small-scale works of the period.

Information regarding the artist’s specific handling, brush technique, or the painting’s current condition is not recorded in the provided sources.

History & Provenance

Landscape with Bowlers was painted by Adriaen Brouwer in 1635. The work is executed in oil on oak panel.

The painting's provenance includes several notable owners. It was once in the collection of Wilhelm von Bode, the prominent German art historian and museum director. Later, it passed to Maurice Kann, a French collector of Dutch and Flemish art.

Subsequently, the British collector William Wells owned the work before it entered the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, where it remains today.

Overview

Created in 1635 by the Flemish painter Adriaen Brouwer, this oil on canvas depicts a nocturnal countryside setting where a group of figures engage in a bowling game. The composition combines a modest rural architecture, a house and barn, with a moonlit sky, situating the activity within a tranquil, open landscape. The work is part of the collection of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.

Fishermen's cottages in the dunes, Meindert Hobbema

Artist & collection

Artist

Adriaen Brouwer

Adriaen Brouwer (c. 1605 – January 1638) was a Flemish painter active in Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the first half of the 17th century. Brouwer was an important innovator of genre painting through his vivid…