Abraham and Hagar 1615 - 1618

David Teniers painted this large canvas, Abraham and Hagar, with oil paint sometime in the 17th century. Teniers was working at a time when artists usually ground their own pigments, so his connection to the material of oil paint would have been quite intimate. The character of the pigment plays out across this composition: earthy browns and beiges contrasting with the highlights on the skin and textiles. We can also see this play out in the form, where the artist applied thin layers of paint, and then manipulated them with brushes and rags to create an illusion of three-dimensionality. Oil painting was then a relatively recent technology. Its capacity for realism was often celebrated as superior to older media, like tempera. But, even in its own time, painting was of course itself a product of highly skilled labour. Seeing paintings in this way helps us to understand how they operated in the social world, and to value them accordingly.