JAN VONCK (Torun 1631 – c.1663/64)
Jan Vonck (Torun 1631 – c.1663/64)
Trompe l’oeil still-life with birds and shooting equipment
Oil on panel, 53.4 x 25.5 cm (21 x 10 inch)
Signed and dated ‘JVonck. F - / A 1663 -’
Provenance
~ With Robert Noortman, Maastricht/London, 1992
~ Private collection
***
Jan Vonck was born in 1631 in Torun, also known as Thorn, in the North of Poland as the son of the Amsterdam painter Elias Vonck (1605–1652), who worked in Poland from 1631 to 1639.1 Jan received his artistic training from his father in Amsterdam during the early 1640s, and followed in his footsteps by specialising in still-lifes, frequently depicting fish or the attributes of hunting and shooting. Such paintings were very sought after by the nobility and landed gentry, who enjoyed the country sports. Not much is known about Vonck’s life, but he is thought to have spent his working years in Amsterdam, where he also married Trijntje Jans on 6 December 1653. Like his father, he collaborated with the landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/29–1682), painting animals in his landscapes.
Paintings by Vonck are preserved in the collections of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon, the Groninger Museum, Groningen, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the Boymans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam and the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
The present painting is unusual in Vonck’s oeuvre in its illusionism, as if the viewer was looking through a window. Various birds are tied to two branches, suspended from a hook, while a shotgun, shooting bag and horn are leaning against the wall. The trompe l’oeil effect is only broken by Vonck’s elegant signature and date, which illustrate the artist’s pride in this particular work. It is possible that this painting was originally set into the panelling of a room, possibly dedicated to hunting and shooting: a highly related painting of the same dimensions and similar iconography, also signed and dated to the year 1663, is preserved in the Dordrechts Museum (fig.).2 Other paintings could also have been included in the pictorial scheme, doubtless commissioned by a dedicated collector with a passion for hunting and shooting, but these are no longer known.
Unlike many other artists of his time, Vonck does not show the birds ready to be cooked or displayed on expensive platters as tokens of wealth and status. They seem to exist in a placeless world, out of time. Vonck’s painting confronts us with the basic facts of life – and death.
1. For the artist, see Adriaan van der Willigen and Fred G. Meijer, A dictionary of Dutch and Flemish still-life painters working in oils: 1626-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 210.
2. Oil on panel, 53.8 x 25.4 cm, signed and dated ‘H.J. Vonck / Fecit Ao 1663’; inv. no. DM/017/1185; the painting was formerly owned by Brian Sewell; sold Christie’s, London, 27 September 2016, lot 129; subsequently it was with Rafael Valls, catalogue Recent Acquisitions, London 2017, cat. no. 32, repr.
