SALOMON KONINCK
An Old Man Sleeping in an Armchair.

Etching, 1629-56. 216x108 mm; 8½x4¼ inches, thread margins. Indiscernible, small bunch of grapes (?) watermark. A very good impression of this extremely scarce, early etching.

We have found only one other impression at auction in the past 30 years.

Koninck (1609-1656) was a member of a family of Dutch artists, including Philips and Jacob Koninck (or de Koninck). He was a pupil of François Venant and Claes Moyaert and married to the daughter of Adriaen van Nielandt, an art dealer who lived close to Rembrandt van Rijn in Leiden during the 1630s. Koninck was a follower of Rembrandt and during much of his career, modeled his own style from Rembrandt's use of rich contrasts and his choice of subjects, including elderly men. Though significantly influenced by Rembrandt, Koninck was more of a painter, and less of a peintre-graveur like Rembrandt. He created only six different etchings, each of which is extremely scarce and printed in a very small run of impressions. Hollstein 4.