Lot 669: JACOB XAVER VERMOELEN

JACOB XAVER VERMOELEN ANTWERP CIRCA 1714 - 1784 ROME A DEAD SPOONBILL; ON THE VERSO, A FURTHER STUDY OF THE BIRD'S HEAD Oil on paper; signed in brown ink, lower left margin: Vermoelen Pincit a Roma 552 by 394 mm; 21 3/4 by 15 1/2 in

Bob Haboldt & Co., Northern European Old Master Drawings and Oil Sketches, exhib. cat., New York 2001-2, p. 158, under cat. no. 66

Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby, Mak van Waay, 21 March 1977, lot 39

Vermoelen was a pupil of Peter Snyers, and is listed as being a member of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1733-4. By 1748, however, he was in Rome, where he remained for a number of years: all of his surviving works are still lifes of dead birds, which were executed in Rome and dated between 1748 and 1755.

This is one of a group of four oil sketches that were sold in Amsterdam in 1977. Another, depicting two dead rollers, is lot 671 below, and the study of a curlew was sold by Bob Haboldt in 2001 (see Literature).