(Antwerp c. 1645 – after 1701 Brussels)

A landscape with a buzzard attacking ducks,
oil on canvas, 123 x 174 cm, framed

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for confirming the present painting to be an autograph and characteristic work by David de Coninck on the basis of a photograph. He will include the painting in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné.

Meijer writes: “David de Coninck (c. 1644-1701 or after) was a talented painter of animals and still life. He registered in Antwerp in 1659 as a pupil of Peeter Boel (1622-1674), who himself had been taught by Joannes Fijt (1611-1661). David de Coninck rarely signed his paintings and due to their high quality and related style they were often confused with the work of his predecessors Boel, Fijt and even Frans Snijders. After the mid-1660s, de Coninck worked in Paris for some time, and by 1671 he had settled in Rome, where he built up a successful career, painting scenes with live animals such as peacocks, turkeys, chickens and ducks, rabbits and guinea pigs, often in a garden setting. The game still life with dogs was another favoured subject of his, as well as hunting scenes, for which he followed his teacher’s example. This is also the case for the painting presented here. De Coninck may well have owned Boel’s series of prints of live birds that was published around 1657, just before he became Boel’s pupil. David de Coninck painted several variants of this composition in varying sizes, and in all, several ducks were clearly inspired by the models in one of his master’s prints.”

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for the cataloguing of the present lot.