Born on 15 November 1619 in Amsterdam, the son of the well-to-do goldsmith Aert de Koninck. He was the youngest of six brothers. His oldest brother, Jacob Koninck the Elder, taught him the craft of painting in Rotterdam. In the inventory of his deceased father's estate from March 1639, two works by Philips Koninck are listed: a woman's head and a portrait. On 2 January 1640, Jacob Koninck received thirty gulden from the guardians of Aert de Koninck's orphaned children as a last payment for Philips's tuition. On 1 January 1641, Philips married in Rotterdam Cornelia Furnerius, daughter of the surgeon and organist Johan Furnerius and sister of the Rembrandt pupil Abraham Furnerius, who died soon after their marriage. In 1641 or 1642 at the latest, he returned to Amsterdam. There are no documentary mentions from the following years, but it assumed that Philips continued to live in Amsterdam, where he belonged to the circle around Rembrandt. In 1653 he was asked to appraise a picture by Paul Bril. On 21 October 1654, he participated in the founding ceremonies of the 'Broderschap der Schilderkunst' (Brotherhood of Artists) in Amsterdam, and presumably for that occasion painted the 'Bacchus Party' (The Hague, Museum Bredius). On 15 May 1657, he married Margaretha van Rijn, with whom he would raise four daughters and a son. In 1667 and 1672 he again served as an appraiser. In 1681 he is documented as the owner of the ferry service to Rotterdam. He was buried in Amsterdam on 6 October 1688.
The painter was highly regarded by his contemporaries, as is attested by the reception of his 'Self-Portrait', dated 1667, in the self-portrait gallery in Florence (now the Uffizi). His fame was based on his portraits, history paintings and mythological pictures - the latter repeatedly praised by writer Joost van den Vondel, a friend of his, and the only works of his mentioned by Houbraken. But Koninck also painted peasant genre pictures under the influence of Pieter de Bloot, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh, and Adriaen Brouwer, as well as panorama-like landscapes based on examples by Rembrandt from the 1630s and similar to those by Hercules Seghers. Today it is his landscapes with which Koninck is presented in museums and exhibitions in Holland as one of the greatest representatives of this genre, whereas the works for which he was famous among contemporaries are no longer given particular attention. Some 300 drawings and a few engravings by Koninck survive.
