Adriaen Brouwer[1] (c. 1605 – January 1638) was a Flemish painter active in Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the first half of the 17th century.

[2][3] Brouwer was an important innovator of genre painting through his vivid depictions of peasants, soldiers and other "lower class" individuals engaged in drinking, smoking, card or dice playing, fighting, music making etc.

[2][4] Although Brouwer produced only a small body of work, Dutch masters Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt collected it.

Possibly it was for tax evasion, or, alternatively, for political reasons because the local authorities may have considered him to be a spy for the Dutch Republic.

Based on information provided by contemporary Flemish biographer Cornelis de Bie in his book Het Gulden Cabinet van Craesbeeck is believed to have become Brouwer's pupil and best friend.

[10] On 26 April 1634 Adriaen Brouwer took up lodgings in the house of the prominent engraver Paulus Pontius as the two men had become close friends.

[7] It has been suggested that Brouwer's painting called Fat Man or Luxuria (Mauritshuis), which possibly represents the deadly sin of lust, is at the same time a portrait of Paulus Pontius.

[11] Early biographers describe how Adriaen Brouwer and his artist friends spent much of their time in local taverns.

A month after his death on 1 February 1638, his body was re-interred in the Carmelite Church of Antwerp after a solemn ceremony and at the initiative and expense and in the presence of his artist friends.

[12] The principal subject matter of Brouwer are genre scenes with peasants, soldiers and other "lower class" individuals engaging in drinking, smoking, card or dice playing, fights etc.

[4] In his genre scenes Brouwer depicted peasants, soldiers and other "lower class" individuals engaging in various forms of vices such as drinking, smoking, card or dice playing, brawls etc.

This view may have come from ethical ideas of Seneca the Younger that were formulated as neostoicism by Justus Lipsius, and generally accepted in Antwerp's humanist circle of which Brouwer formed part.

[3] Adriaen Brouwer is regarded as an important innovator of portrait painting, a prominent genre in Netherlandish art.

His most famous group portrait is set in a tavern and is referred to as The Smokers (c. 1636, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City).

[13] Despite the modern title, the scene is a group portrait of fellow artists of Adriaen Brouwer who resided in Antwerp.

These (self-)portraits emphasized the artists' dissolute nature by creating associations with traditional moral themes such as the Five Senses, the Seven Deadly Sins and the Prodigal Son in the Tavern.

The term tronie typically refers to figure studies not intended to depict an identifiable person, but rather to investigate varieties of expression.

His work gave a face to lower-class figures by infusing their images with recognizable and vividly expressed human emotions—anger, joy, pain, and pleasure.

His Youth Making a Face (c. 1632/1635, National Gallery of Art) shows a young man with a satirical and mocking gesture which humanises him, however uninviting he may appear.

Brouwer's vigorous application of paint in this composition, with his characteristically short, unmodulated brushstrokes, increases the dramatic effect.

[2][16][17] In Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1837, Letitia Elizabeth Landon published a poem entitled "A Dutch Interior" based on Brouwer's painting Peasants playing cards in an Inn.