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Lot Essay
A pupil of Cornelis de Vos (no relation), Simon de Vos became in 1620 a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke; for the next eight years, however, he worked in Rubens' studio and then travelled abroad: as suggested by the similarities between de Vos's oeuvre and that of Johann Liss, who was in Rome and Venice at that time. De Vos married a sister of the painter Adriaen van Utrecht in 1626 and between 1629 and 1642 took two pupils in his studio in Antwerp, where he worked for most of his life. De Vos's earlier work consists for the most part of cabinet pictures of genre scenes, with occasional history subjects. The latter feature increasingly prominently through his career, until after circa 1640 they predominate within his oeuvre.
As with the present picture, de Vos's style tends towards Mannerist compositions, with elegant, often exotic, figures; his settings are lightly sketched in - typically with wide horizons and grouped figures - and his colours rich, the whole displaying debts to Frans Francken II and, increasingly as his career progressed, to Rubens and Van Dyck. The present work displays many of those characteristics, and is comparable to such works by de Vos as the Seven Acts of Mercy (1635; Warsaw, Muzeum Narodowe) and the pendants David and Abigail and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (both 1641; St Petersburg, Hermitage). De Vos's standing amongst his contemporaries is indicated by the fact that Rubens owned a painting by him; his portrait (1635; Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) was painted by Abraham de Vries (c. 1590-1650), and a print of it was included in Van Dyck's Iconography (Antwerp, c. 1632-44).
As with the present picture, de Vos's style tends towards Mannerist compositions, with elegant, often exotic, figures; his settings are lightly sketched in - typically with wide horizons and grouped figures - and his colours rich, the whole displaying debts to Frans Francken II and, increasingly as his career progressed, to Rubens and Van Dyck. The present work displays many of those characteristics, and is comparable to such works by de Vos as the Seven Acts of Mercy (1635; Warsaw, Muzeum Narodowe) and the pendants David and Abigail and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (both 1641; St Petersburg, Hermitage). De Vos's standing amongst his contemporaries is indicated by the fact that Rubens owned a painting by him; his portrait (1635; Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) was painted by Abraham de Vries (c. 1590-1650), and a print of it was included in Van Dyck's Iconography (Antwerp, c. 1632-44).