Youth Making a Face

Adriaen Brouwer captured a moment of crude humor in this small painting of a young man making a grotesque face. The subject pulls his features into an exaggerated grimace, his tongue visible and eyes squinting in an expression meant to provoke laughter or disgust. Brouwer's quick, fluid brushwork brings raw energy to this earthy subject.

Brouwer specialized in peasant scenes, tavern interiors, and genre subjects showing the coarser side of Flemish life. His talent was recognized by Rubens and Rembrandt, both of whom collected his paintings. Such "tronie" studies of exaggerated expressions were popular in the Low Countries, serving both as artistic exercises and comic entertainment. This work now hangs at the Louvre in Paris, among the world's greatest painting collections.