David Vinckboons - The Nest Robber - image-1

Lot 1025 Dα

David Vinckboons - The Nest Robber

Auction 1076 - overview Cologne
19.11.2016, 11:00 - Old Master Paintings and Drawings, Sculpture
Estimate: 40.000 € - 45.000 €
Result: 44.640 € (incl. premium)

David Vinckboons

The Nest Robber

Oil on panel (parquetted). 38 x 55 cm.

With the panel maker's monogram “IS” for Lambert Steens (active in Antwerp around 1600) to the reverse.
David Vinckboons was born in Mechelen in Flanders and belonged to the wider circle of the Brueghel family. Like the Brueghel family in Antwerp, he too painted landscapes rich in figures and foliage. He moved to Amsterdam in 1605 at the latest, where he pursued a successful career until his death. He is recorded as having purchased a house with rear building and cellar in the St. Anthonisbreetstraat in 1611, and it still stands to this day. Vinckboons went through a period of frequently illustrating Flemish proverbs from 1605 to 1610. The present work picks up on a motif already touched on by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (for example in his work in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna). The Flemish proverb goes “Dije den nest weet die weethen, Maer dijen hem rooft die heeften”, meaning “He who knows where the nest lies knows it, but he who steals it owns it”. In his catalogue raisonné of the artist, Klaus Ertz lists seven different versions of this apparently highly popular subject entitled “The Nest Robber”. The present work is almost identical in composition to a drawing by this artist in the Cabinet des Estampes in the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels.

Certificate

K. Goosens, Borgerhout.

Provenance

Galerie Robert Finck, Brussels 1970. - Lermpertz Cologne, 20.5.2006, no. 182. - Private collection, Belgium.

Literature

K. Ertz / Ch. Nitze-Ertz: David Vinckboons 1576 - 1632. Monographie mit kritischem Katalog der Zeichnungen und Gemälde, 2016, p. 392, no., 153.