Brouwer

Brouwer (sometimes written BRAUWER), ADRIAN, a Dutch painter, was born at Oudenarde (now in Belgium) in 1605 or 1606, of extremely poor parents, studied at Haarlem under Franz Hals, and about 1630 settled at Antwerp. Here, under the influence of Rubens, who thought highly of him, he attained to great brilliancy of colour; and from the beginning he had shown great power of strong and graphic characterisation. His favourite subjects were scenes from tavern life, country merrymakings, card-players, smoking and drinking groups, and roisterers generally. His life was dissipated and embarrassed by debt; and he died of the plague in an Antwerp hospital in 1638, not yet thirty-three years of age. His influence was marked on Teniers the younger, Van Ostade, and others. His best pictures are at Munich, St Petersburg, Madrid, Dresden, and Vienna. See Lives by Schmidt (Leip. 1873) and Bode (Vienna, 1884).