A Gipsy Fortune Teller in a Hilly Landscape
- Artist: David Teniers the Younger
- Date: about 1640
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Museum: The National Gallery
- Collection record: The National Gallery website
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About this artwork
This is "A Gipsy Fortune Teller in a Hilly Landscape" painted in Flanders, likely by David Teniers the Younger. The idea of the romantic wanderer was really popular back then and inspired beautiful narrative paintings that leave you to interpret.
You've got a group of nomads who have stopped to rest on this bleak mountainside. One of them is reading the palm of a passing peasant. Now, look at the little boy in the purple jacket - he's the interesting part here. Is he with the peasant or the fortune teller? What's he doing there?
And then you've got another man who's already disappearing over the brow of that pathway. Perhaps he was keen to avoid this interruption to his journey.
This painting is probably an early work by Teniers, a highly successful genre painter. It was later used as a design for a tapestry by J. van Bortch, but in reverse.
See it in person
A Gipsy Fortune Teller in a Hilly Landscape hangs in The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
