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Schilderij Jan Mankes te koop, Vogelnestje in de duinen tentoongesteld in Museum Arnhem

Jan Mankes - Bird’s Nest in the Dunes, 1909

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Jan Mankes (1889-1920)

Bird’s Nest in the Dunes

Signed and dated upper right '09

Oil on canvas on panel

13.8 x 28 cm


Condition:

In very good condition


Provenance:

A. Pauwels, The Hague 1920; Kunsthandel J.H. de Bois, Haarlem 1922; Utrechtse Kunsthandel J. van Es, Utrecht 1922; Mak van Waay Auction House, Amsterdam 1958; Galerie van Voorst en Beest, The Hague 1984; H. Swagemakers, Oosterhout 2005.


Literature:

Alied Ottevanger, Jan Mankes, 1889-1920 (catalogue raisonné) - cat. no. Sch 7; Jan de Lange and Maarten van Doremalen, Jan Mankes – Mooie dingen zijn zo eenvoudig (catalogue raisonné) - cat. no. 25-12.


Information:

Jan Mankes is regarded as one of the most sensitive artists in Dutch art history. His contemplative view of landscape, animals and still life earned him the nickname “the most tranquil painter in the Netherlands”. From his quiet surroundings, he observed nature with an almost monastic attention: every bird, flower and play of light was distilled into an intimate, concentrated essence.


Jan Mankes’s oeuvre is small but exceptionally coherent. It is a world of silence, detail and poetic clarity that continues to resonate deeply today. This is also reflected in the recent attention given to his work at Museum Belvédère and Museum Arnhem, where his art was once again shown to great effect. With very fine brushstrokes and subtle, often luminous colour accents, he captured animals in their natural surroundings, flowers at the point between bloom and decay, and his loved ones, such as his wife Annie Mankes Zernike. This restrained melancholy, together with an awareness of vulnerability and transience, runs as a quiet undercurrent through his work.


Despite Jan Mankes’s early death at just thirty, his reputation lives on. Mankes’s drawings, prints and paintings are rarely offered on the market and are cherished by museums including the Rijksmuseum, Museum Belvédère, Museum MORE, Museum Arnhem and Museum Møhlmann. His oeuvre remains an anchor for anyone seeking calm, attention and purity in art.

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