Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623-1673), once wrote an allegory in which two young women discuss the merits of smoking. According to the first woman, inhaling tobacco “composeth the mind — it busies the thoughts — it settles and soothes the senses — strengthens the judgment — spies out errors — evaporates follies — it heats ambition — it comforts sorrows — it elevates imaginations — it quickens wit.”
“It makes the breath stink,” replies her companion.
In 17th-century Flanders and Holland, there was similar discord over the effects of smoking. Pictures of “smoking companies” — such as this superb little painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Adriaen Brouwer — became common. And although they were generally intended as commentaries on vice (and not just the vice of bad breath), they could also make smoking look fun.
Brouwer is believed to have studied briefly in Haarlem under Frans Hals, a master of fleeting expressions of happiness. Brouwer worked out of Antwerp, and although his career was short (he died in his early 30s) he was one of the most admired 17th-century Netherlandish painters. Rubens and Rembrandt each owned several of his pictures, and he profoundly influenced the development of genre painting (scenes of ordinary life) and “tronies” (studies of facial expressions and types).
Tobacco-smoking was still new in Europe. It was not quite as accursed as it has lately become in states such as California, but it was widely despised. Only about 30 years before Brouwer painted “The Smokers,” King James I of England — he of the King James Bible — penned “A Counterblaste to Tobacco,” in which he deplored smoking as “a custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmful to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.”
Interesting, then, that Brouwer painted himself at the center of this tavern scene, flanked by two of his painter friends — his Antwerp colleague Jan Cossiers and the still life painter Jan de Heem. The picture, in oils on wood, is just 18 inches high. Note the subtle sense of disarray — tobacco papers on the table and ground, a crumpled white cloth under Brouwer’s backside — generating a vivid sense of revelers up to no good. Even the view through the window shows a man with his arm around a woman.
Brouwer was a master at capturing — without ever falling into caricature — surprise, anger and other distinctive expressions. In this case, he conveys deep absorption in a complicated ritual aimed at getting a drug into the bloodstream via the lungs (and perhaps blowing smoke rings).
Is it really just tobacco they’re taking? Seriously, just look at them. If these guys aren’t getting stoned, I’m on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Despite state and church prohibitions, it was common practice in the Netherlands to lace beer with various “trance-inducing or hallucinogenic substances,” according to the art historian Simon Schama, and there’s a strong possibility that tobacco was similarly spiked — perhaps with cannabis brought back by Dutch traders from the Levant or India.
Brouwer paints his own expression with an arresting specificity — not just the O-shaped mouth of deep inhalation but the wide eyes of surprise. Whether he is alarmed by the viewer’s sudden intrusion or staggered by the drug’s first effects is hard to say. His companions, meanwhile, convey ostentatiously conspiratorial humor (on the left); dreamy, glazed-eyed stupor (the two in the middle) and gluttonous anticipation (on the right). Thus, what seems like a window onto a brief slice of time is extended into a subtle narrative that includes preparation and aftermath.
Dutch and Flemish painters in the 17th century turned images of smoking companies into allegories for the concept of ijdelheid, or what Schama called “the vain and lethargic passage of the hours.” They were early conversation pieces — intended to prompt reflections on the vanity and transience of worldly pleasures.
Ideally, such reflections might lead you to commit yourself to virtue, godliness and eternal values. The alternatives — vice, idleness and sensuality — were not only transient (“Man’s life passes even as smoke,” wrote the 16th-century Dutch preacher Johannes Sartorius); they would lead you to hell. But if, as you reflected, the pictures themselves offered up a little amusement … well, a little vice can be nice.
On the subject of sloth, the painter Lucian Freud said his idea of luxury was “having all the time in the world and letting it pass unused” — a sensation familiar, I think, to cannabis smokers. And to Oscar Wilde, smoking cigarettes was “the perfect type of a perfect pleasure” precisely because of its transience: “It is exquisite and it leaves one unsatisfied.”
A series featuring art critic Sebastian Smee’s favorite works in permanent collections around the United States. “They are things that move me. Part of the fun is trying to figure out why.”
Photo editing and research by Kelsey Ables. Design and development by Junne Alcantara.