- 27
David Vinckboons Mechelen 1576 - 1629 Amsterdam
Description
- David Vinckboons
- gentlemen tasting wine in a landscape
- dated, lower left: 1607
- pen and brown ink and gray wash over black chalk; a small area made up at right edge
Provenance
Galippe Collection, sale, Amsterdam, de Vries, 27-29 March 1923;
W. Söchting, Voorburg;
J.G. Collection, Paris, sale, Amsterdam, de Vries, 20 December 1927, lot 382, reproduced, pl. XXIII
Literature
Catalogue Note
Although Wegner and Pée listed this under "doubtful works" in their 1980 catalogue of drawings by Vinckboons (see Literature), they also stated that they were judging it only from the very poor illustration in the 1927 sale catalogue, and that no definitive opinion regarding the drawing's authenticity could be given without seeing it in the original.
Now that the drawing itself has re-emerged, it is clear that their doubts were misplaced, and that it is in fact a splendid, autograph work by the artist, of a type and on a scale that has rarely appeared on the market in recent times. In fact, only two large figural drawings by Vinckboons of comparable importance to this have been sold at auction in the last two decades. The first was the study for the 1605-7 painting of The Blind Hurdy-Gurdy Player (sold London, Sotheby's, 1 July 1991, lot 59, and now in the Abrams Collection). The second was the splendid frontispiece design for The Light of Navigation, first published in 1608 (sold, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 12 November 1996, lot 80).
All three of these figure drawings were produced during a period of 2-3 years, when Vinckboons was at the peak of his powers as a draughtsman. Here, just as in the other two, the artist has produced a characteristically engaging depiction of a rather unusual subject (depictions of aristocratic wine-tasting are far from common in early 17th-century Dutch art); and he has drawn his subject with typical verve and technical skill, and with great narrative wit and power.