Biography

Flemish-born painter, active in Amsterdam. He painted landscapes and genre scenes and is a transitional figure between the decorative and imaginative Mannerist tradition and the more naturalistic style associated with 17th-century Dutch painting. His early genre pictures depicting village festivals reveal the influence of Pieter Bruegel, and Vinckboons is credited with introducing some of his motifs into Holland. It has been asserted that Vinckboons's works can always be identified by the presence of a finch ('vinck') in a tree ('boom'), but the painstaking student usually finds that the bird has flown.