Smoking Scene (The Sense of Taste)

In Antwerp in Brouwer's day, people did not always say that a man smoked his pipe. An inventory of the time describes a painting of toubackdrinckers, tobacco drinkers, and that habit of speech makes it less strange that a pipe could stand for the sense of taste. This small panel belongs to a series of the five senses, and Munich also owns two others from it, Feeling and Hearing. The museum points first to the man in front. He is concentrating so hard on lighting his pipe with a taper, a spill of paper, that his eyes have almost crossed, and his hollow cheeks show the first deep draw. The museum calls Brouwer's way of painting here informal and precise at the same time, and the whole scene fits on a panel only about 24 centimetres tall.