''The Smokers'' is a painting by the

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

painter

Adriaen Brouwer Adriaen Brouwer (, in Oudenaarde – January 1638, in Antwerp) was a Flemish painter active in Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the first half of the 17th century.

, painted in ''

ca. CA or ca may refer to: Businesses and organizations Companies * Air China (IATA airline code CA) * CA Technologies, a U.S. software company * Cayman Airways, a Cayman Islands airline * Channel America, a defunct U.S. television network * Classi ...

'' 1636, probably in Antwerp. It hangs in

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 F ...

, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The oil-on-wood painting measures and is signed by the artist.

Description

The painting is of five young men smoking pipes and drinking beer. Brouwer included a self-portrait: he is the one turning to face the viewer while lifting a drinking mug and exhaling smoke. While the other artists have not been identified with certainty, it has been suggested the person in black and white apparel depicted on the right is painter Jan de Heem; the person in the middle is

Joos van Craesbeeck Joos van Craesbeeck (''c''. 1605/06 – ''c''. 1660) was a Flemish baker and a painter who played an important role in the development of Flemish genre art, genre painting in the mid-17th century through his tavern scenes and dissolute portraits. ...

; the person depicted blowing smoke out of his nose is

Jan Cossiers Jan Cossiers (Antwerp, 15 July 1600 – Antwerp, 4 July 1671) was a Flemish painter and draughtsman. Cossiers' earliest works were Caravaggesque genre works depicting low life scenes. Later in his career he painted mostly history and religi ...

; and

Jan Lievens Jan Lievens (24 October 1607 – 4 June 1674) was a Dutch Golden Age painter who was associated with his close contemporary Rembrandt, a year older, in the early parts of their careers. They shared a birthplace in Leiden, training with Pieter L ...

is the person on the far left.

References

1630s paintings Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Self-portraits {{17C-painting-stub