Gillis van Tilborgh

He became the keeper of the picture collection of the governor of the Habsburg Netherlands and travelled in England where he painted group portraits.

He was appointed in 1666 as the keeper of the painting collection of the court and Tervuren castle, the residence of the governor of the Habsburg Netherlands.

[5] His presumed master David Teniers the Younger had previously held the same position for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the art loving governor of the Habsburg Netherlands.

[5] In his tavern scenes he shows himself to be a close follower of Adriaen Brouwer, just as David Ryckaert III and Joos van Craesbeeck were.

The earliest works in this genre depicted art objects together with other items such as scientific instruments or peculiar natural specimens.

The paintings are heavy with symbolism and allegory and are a reflection of the intellectual preoccupations of the age, including the cultivation of personal virtue and the importance of connoisseurship.

He depicts his figures in the gallery paintings to emphasise that they form part of an elite who possess privileged knowledge of art.

The genre of gallery paintings had by then become a medium to accentuate the notion that the powers of discernment associated with connoisseurship are socially superior to or more desirable than other forms of knowing.

[5] Like many of his contemporaries such as Teniers and Coques, he painted allegories, an example of which is the series depicting the Five Senses (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium).

Guardroom scenes often included mercenaries and prostitutes dividing booty, harassing captives or indulging in other forms of reprehensible activities.

[18] Another collaboration was with the landscape painter Guilliam van Schoor with whom he made a View of Tervuren castle (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium).