David Teniers the Younger popularised the theme of the alchemist in Flemish painting. Until the Renaissance, experimenting with alchemy was the prerogative of royalty, philosophers, and fraudulent artists. By the time Teniers created this painting, however, the rising merchant classes were trying it too. Although experimenting with alchemy was still controversial, its techniques, mainly consisting of distillation and metallurgy, were contributing a great deal to science and industry.

This painting once belonged to Monsieur Nourri, Conseilleur to the Grand Conseil, the Superior Court of Justice during the Ancien Régime. It formed part of an important painting collection, which included Italian, French, Dutch and Flemish paintings as well as oil sketches and drawings. The entire collection was auctioned after Monsieur Nourri’s death in 1785 in Paris. It became part of the collection of Peter Isaac Thelluson, a wealthy London merchant and Member of Parliament. This painting was sold at auction after his death in 1808.

A similar Alchemist is in the Johnson Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, dated 1649 (inv. no. 689).

David Teniers the Younger was the most famous seventeenth-century painter of peasant life. He enjoyed great popularity in his own lifetime, and in France during the eighteenth century. His work is now collected in many important museums all over the world. Teniers was born in Antwerp and was probably trained by his father, David Teniers the Elder (1582-1649). He was influenced by the course peasant scenes of Adriaen Brouwer (1605/6-1638) and by his father-in-law Jan Brueghel (1568-1625). The artist became a member of the guild of St. Luke in Antwerp in circa 1632. By 1645-46 Teniers served as Dean of the St. Luke guild, and in 1647 he was employed by the governor of the Spanish Netherlands, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. Appointed court painter in 1651, Teniers moved from Antwerp to Brussels, where his tasks included overseeing and expanding the Archduke’s collection of paintings, producing gallery pictures that documented the scope of the collection, as well as producing an illustrated catalogue of the collection, the Theatrum Pictorium (Brussels, 1660).