(Malines 1576–1632 Amsterdam)
The Fight between Winter and Summer,
fragments of a signature lower left,
oil on panel, 55.2 x 84.4 cm, framed

Provenance:
Evers brothers, Arnhem (1943);
sale, Paul Brandt, Amsterdam, 22nd May 1962, lot 3 (as Pieter Balten, signed and dated);
Kohn Collection, Stuttgart (1965);
sale, Lempertz, Cologne, 15th November 1972, lot 17 (as Pieter Balten);
Private collection, Southern Germany

Literature:
G. Marlier, “Peeter Balten, kopiist of kreatief kunstenaar”, in: Bulletin van de Koninklijke Musea vor Schone Kunsten Belgie, 14, 1965, p. 132, no. 4 (as Peeter Balten)

We are grateful to Klaus Ertz for confirming the authenticity of the present painting. A certificate (11th August 2016) is available.

Klaus Ertz on the present painting: “I am convinced that this is a well preserved original by the Flemish painter David Vinckboons, executed by him in Amsterdam around 1620. Including the present painting, I have so far only seen two compositions on this subject matter, the second of which the artist set in a town at night time (see: K. Ertz, David Vinckboons, Lingen, 2016, p. 397, no. 164, ill. p. 398). For the present version, he borrowed the figural types from various categories of genre scenes: the elegantly dressed figures on the left derive from the theme of the merry company, whereas the group on the right illustrates the joys and sorrows of peasant life. Like no other painter, the artist understood how to model his figures either ‘nobly’ or ‘lowly’, depending on their social rank, which fully comes into its own here.”

In his Vinckboons monograph of 2016, Ertz writes about the artist: “In David Vinckboons we are faced with an artist who, because of his origins, seems to embody the Flemish element but who, through his life in Amsterdam, was predestined like no other painter to combine a Flemish heritage with the Dutch reality that surrounded him” (see: K. Ertz, op. cit., p. 7).