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TENTERS, DAVID. 



TKNNENT, SIR JAMES EMERSON. 



'.<: > 



the palaces and mansions of this country, including his ' Flora/ exe- 

 cuted for her Majesty, and 'Cupid extracting a Thorn from the foot 

 of Venus,' in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, 

 and of which the Emperor of Russia has a duplicate. Tenerani is pro- 

 fessor of sculpture in the Academy of St. Luke, Rome, a member of 

 the French Institute, and of the Academies of Berlin and Munich, &c. ; 

 and he was in 1842 made a Knight of the order of St. Michael by 

 King Ludwig of Bavaria. His son Giambattista Tenerani is also a 

 sculptor of merit. 



TENIERS, DAVID (the Elder) was born at Antwerp in 1582. Ho 

 had the good fortune to study painting under Rubens, who highly 

 esteemed him for his promising genius. Besides the benefit of the 

 instruction of that great master, he had the advantage of learning 

 his manner of preparing his grounds and managing his materials. It 

 is said that he began by painting pictures on a large scale : but having 

 gone to Rome with the intention of improving himself in the higher 

 branches of the art, ho there contracted an intimate friendship with 

 his countryman Adam Elsheimer, whoso exquisitely-finished cabinet 

 pictures were greatly esteemed, and he studied with him several years, 

 painting only small pictures. It was here that he acquired the neat- 

 ness of pencilling for which his works are esteemed, and which, with 

 the knowledge of colour acquired under Rubens, gives to his works so 

 great a charm. 



Returning to his native country after ten years' absence, he devoted 

 himself with the greatest ardour to the practice of his art, and chose 

 the familiar scenes of ordinary Flemish life, such as merry-makings, 

 weddings, the interior and exterior of public-houses, rural games, 

 chemists' laboratories, and grotesque subjects, such as the Temptation 

 of St. Anthony and the like. These subjects he treated with the 

 utmost truth and fidelity to nature. His colouring, his touch, his 

 design, the pleasing distribution of light and shade, the skilful com- 

 position of his groups, procured him great reputation and constant 

 employment : every lover of the art was eager to possess some of his 

 works. He may in fact be considered as the inventor of a new manner, 

 which was followed and carried to a still higher degree of perfection by 

 his son. He died at Antwerp in the year 1649, at the age of sixty-seven. 



TENIERS, DAVID (the Younger) was born at Antwerp in 1610, 

 and received his first and principal instruction from his father. Some 

 authors have affirmed that he left his father to become a disciple of 

 Adrian Brouwer, who however was only two years older than himself, 

 and that he had the advantage of the precepts of Rubens. Others 

 have pretended that he was likewise a pupil of Elsheimer, who died 

 when Teuiers was only ten years old. He adopted, as we have 

 observed, the subjects and style of his father; but, with a more 

 fertile imagination, he produced compositions much more varied and 

 ingenious ; his colouring is more vivid, rich, and transparent, and the 

 facility of his execution is enchanting. He studied nature in her varied 

 forms with the most critical attention. He possessed, in perfection, 

 what we have heard one of the brightest ornaments of the British 

 school call " the art, or rather the gift, of seeing." Hence the truth 

 and nature of his pictures, which look almost like reflections in a 

 convex mirror. His pencil is free and delicate ; the touching of his trees 

 light and firm ; his skif s are admirably clear and brilliant, though not 

 much varied. The expression of his figures, in every varying mood, 

 of mirth or gravity, good or ill humour, is strongly marked, striking, 

 and natural ; he represented them however precisely as he saw them 

 before him, but was perhaps inferior in delineation of character to Jan 

 Steen or Wilkie. 



It is remarkable that at the commencement of his career very little 

 regard was shown to his merit, so that he was often obliged to go in 

 person to Brussels to dispose of his pictures. But he was not long 

 neglected. The Archduke Leopold having seen some of his pictures, 

 immediately distinguished him by his patronage, appointed him his 

 principal painter and gentleman of his bedchamber, presented him 

 with a chain of gold to which his portrait was affixed, and gave him 

 the direction of his gallery of paintings, which contained works of the 

 most eminent masters of the Italian and Flemish schools. Teniers, 

 who possessed an extraordinary talent in. imitating the works of other 

 artists, made copies of this gallery, in which the touch, the colouring, 

 and the manner of the several painters, however different from each 

 other, were reproduced with such a deceptive fidelity, that he acquired 

 the name of the Proteus of painting. Some writers have objected that 

 his figures are too short and clumsy, and that there is too much same- 

 ness in their countenances and habits : but it must be remembered 

 that he designed every object as he saw it ; and the charm which his 

 art has thrown on scenes flat and insipid in their forms, even subjects 

 low, barren, and commonplace, justly excites the admiration of all 

 lovers of the art, and the extraordinary prices which are given for his 

 works in every part of Europe are an incontestable proof of the 

 universal admiration and esteem in which, they are held. This cir- 

 cumstance is the more deserving of attention, as his works, far from 

 being scarce, are extremely numerous : his extraordinary facility of 

 execution and the great age to which he attained enabled him to pro- 

 duce such a number of pictures, that he was used to say in joke that 

 to hold all his paintings (though they were of such small dimensions) 

 it would be necessary to build a gallery two leagues in length. It is said 

 that his thinly-painted pictures were often begun and completed at a 

 single sitting. It is worthy of remark that while of all the Flemish 



Bioo. DIV. VOL. v. 



painters his works are the most popular, he was habitually conversant 

 with the higher clateses of society. The suavity of his manners and 

 his irreproachable conduct secured him the esteem of all his country- 

 men. Besides the Archduke Leopold, he was honoured with the 

 favour and protection of Christina^ queen of Sweden, the king of 

 Spain, Don John of Austria, who became hia pupil, the Prince of 

 Orange, the bishop of Ghent, and other eminent personages. He 

 often assisted the landscape-painters of his time by inserting figures 

 into their ^pictures, and many works of Artois, Van Uden, Breughel, 

 and others derive additional value from this circumstance. The 

 galleries and collections in England contain a great number of his 

 finest works. The National Gallery (1857) contains four paintings 

 by him; 'A Music Party;' 'Boors Regaling;' 'The Misers' (or Money 

 Changers); and 'Players at Tric-trac.' He died at Brussels in tbe 

 year 1694, at the advanced age of eighty-four years. 



TENISON, THOMAS, an eminent English divine, who was ad- 

 vanced by his own deserved reputation for piety, charity, learning, and 

 liberality, to the highest station in the English church. He was born 

 in 1636, at Cottenham in Cambridgeshire, was the son of a clergyman, 

 and was educated in the grammar-school at Norwich, from whence he 

 passed to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was admitted 

 in 1653, and took his bachelor's degree in 1657. The university was 

 then in the state to which it had been brought by the parliamentary 

 commissioners, and the turn of mind of Tenison not according with 

 what at that time was expected from persons undertaking the ministry, 

 he for a time turned to the study of medicine ; but about 1 659 he was 

 privately ordained in the episcopal method then proscribed by the 

 government of the time. The ordination was performed at Richmond 

 in Surrey by Dr. L appa, the expelled bishop of Salisbury. The res- 

 toration of the king, and with it of the episcopal church, soon follow- 

 ing, he was made minister of St. Andrew's Church in Cambridge, in 

 which situation he gained much credit by his attention to his parish- 

 ioners during the time of the plague, in 1665. He had other prefer- 

 ment in the country, as the church of St. Peter Mancroft in Norwich, 

 and the rectory of Holywell in Huntingdonshire. This brings down 

 his history to the year 1680, when, being then doctor in divinity, he 

 was placed on a more conspicuous stage, being presented by King 

 Charles II. to the living of St. Martin's in the Fields. 



In this public situation he acted with great prudence, and with a 

 liberality which emulated the munificence of the clergy of earlier 

 times, giving more than 300. to the poor of his parish in the time of 

 the distress occasioned by the hard frost of 1683, and endowing a free- 

 school, and building and furnishing a library. In 1685 he discharged 

 with singular discretion the difficult duty of attending the Duke of Mon- 

 mouth previous to his execution. In his politics he was a Whig, and a 

 favourer of the Revolution, and was accordingly early marked out by 

 King William for advancement in the church. In 1689 he was made 

 archdeacon of London, and in 1691 bishop of Lincoln. This large 

 diocese, which had been too much neglected, he brought into order. 

 In 1694, on the death of Dr. Tillotson, he was made archbishop of 

 Canterbury, in which high dignity he remained for twenty years. He 

 died on the 14th of December 1715, and was interred in the parish, 

 church of Lambeth. 



A large account of his life was published soon after his death, with- 

 out the name of any author in the title-page, but evidently written by 

 a person possessed of good information, and who was fully sensible to 

 his merits. He speaks of him thus : "And as he was an exact 

 pattern of that exemplary piety, charity, stedfastness, and good conduct 

 requisite in a governor of the church, so perhaps since the primitive 

 age of Christianity and the time of the Apostles there has been no 

 man whose learning and abilities have better qualified him to discharge 

 and defend a trust of that high importance." The library which he 

 founded in the parish of St. Martin's, though it has been greatly 

 neglected, still exists ; and he may be regarded as the founder of the 

 library in the cathedral church of St. Paul, having presented two 

 hundred and fifty pounds to make up four hundred and fifty, which 

 the dean and residentiaries gave for the libraries of two clergymen 

 bought by them in 1707. His will contains many munificent bequests 

 for charitable and religious objects. 



Archbishop Tenison has left no writings behind him which can be 

 said to make part of the general literature of the country, or to 

 establish for him a literary reputation. Yet he published several 

 treatises, mostly connected with the religious and political contro- 

 versies of his age. 



*TENNENT, SIR JAMES EMERSON, KNT., LL.D., is the son of 

 William Emerson, Esq., a merchant of Belfast, by his wife, a daughter 

 of William Arbuthnot, Esq., of Rockville, county Down. He was 

 born at Belfast on the 7th of April 1804, and after being educated at 

 Trinity College, Dublin, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 

 1831, but never practised. Previous to this time he had appeared as an 

 author, his fir=t work being a brief account of his Travels in Greece in 

 1825 ; his second, ' Letters from the ^Egean,' in two volumes, 1829 ; 

 and his third, 'A History of Modern Greece,' in two volumes in 1830. 

 All these works were published under his name of Emc-rson. But, 

 having married, in June 1831, Letitia, daughter and heiress of William 

 Tennent, Esq., of Tempo House, county Fermanagh, a banker in 

 Belfast, and his wife having succeeded to the property by the death of 

 her father in the following year, Mr. Emerson assumed the additional 



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