Two of the five "Senses", after Teniers

Binoche et Giquello sell, through Drouot, on 15 January 2016 two paintings from the "Atelier of David Teniers" estimated at 400 to 600 Euro.

While the first one is correctly described as an "allegory of smell", the second is apparently not recognised as the accompanying "allegory of touch". It seems a bit optimistic to put this in the Teniers atelier, even though that had a rather large production of varying quality: but as two old works after Teniers, the estimate seems on the conservative side.

The "Touch" is a copy after the above Teniers (from the Guildhall Art Gallery in London), but without the decor and with the glee on the face of the old woman replaced by a more concerned expression (probably due to the lack of skill of the copier). The differences in colour and details may indicate a few stations between the original and the copy, not some work straight from the workshop.

I couldn't find a version of the "smell" that was equally close to the one for sale, but paintings like the above show the similarity with the works of Teniers anyway. It is quite possible that an original series of the five senses with the same woman in them existed, and that the "smell" for sale here is a reminder of how the original may have looked. 

One can wonder if other Teniers' paintings, like the above two from the National Gallery featuring a very similar older woman, aren't also part of series of the senses (in this case, taste and hearing?). The above two are not connected in the National Gallery website (even though they came from the same collection at the same time and have similar dimensions), and are given dates ten years apart, but it is obvious that they (or their originals at least, if they are workshop copies) belong together from the many identical elements in them; this makes it more likely that they were part of a series of course, and it would be nice to find the other three senses from the series.