Distribution of Loaves to the Poor

A leading figure in the transition from Mannerist tradition to the new realism in genre painting was David Vinckboons, one of the most popular and prolific painters and print designers of his time. Good proof of Vinckboons’ debt to Bruegel is the debate which scholars still hold about whether some pictures should be attributed to Pieter Brueghel the Younger, whose art was a shadow of his great father’s, or to Vinckboons.

Vinckboon’s family had settled in Amsterdam by the time he was fifteen years old, and he apparently spent the rest of his life in Holland. His work indicate that he had contact with Gillis van Coninxloo, the gifted Flemish landscape painter, who also emigrated to Amsterdam. Vinckboons was one of the artists who helped to forge the new landscape style, but toward the end of his career his interest in the activities of men and women increased. His genre pictures range from early multicoloured ones of large crowds strolling through gardens and Bruegel-like kermis scenes, to those made in the last years of his life which show a close view of a single couple in a landscape.