Rijksmuseum

Object data

pen and black and brown ink, with green, yellow and blue wash, over traces of graphite or black chalk; framing line in dark brown ink

height 187 mm × width 154 mm

Inscriptions

signed and dated: lower right, in brown ink, Cock (?) . f 1634.
inscribed on verso: lower centre, in a seventeenth-century hand, in brown ink, A kerings fc; lower left, in a modern hand, in pencil, A. Kerrincx; lower right, in a modern hand, in pencil, A.Kerrinckx; upper centre (in opposite direction), in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, 35-0-0
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of Pictura, Groningen (L. 2028); next to that, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: peacock within a circle (fragment); similar to Heawood, no. 174 (Venice: 1628)

Provenance

…; purchased from R.W.P. de Vries, Amsterdam, by the museum (L. 2228), 1909

Object number: RP-T-1909-29

The artist

Marten de Cock (? Antwerp 1578 - ? Augsburg 1661)

He was recorded as a resident of Amsterdam in 1630, but, according to Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726-1798), he was born in Antwerp in 1578, apparently the son of a goldsmith, and died in Augsburg in 1661. Ploos van Amstel recorded this birth and death information on the verso of a drawing in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels (inv. no. 4060/900).¹ It is no longer possible to discover his source for this information, assuming that it was not simply a figment of his imagination – which is not inconceivable, for hard facts about De Cock’s career are extremely sparse. The artist might have travelled elsewhere in Europe; a drawing dated 1625 in the Rijksprentenkabinet, inv. no. RP-T-1906-21, bears the autograph annotation Copenhage, while another drawing in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt-am-Main is signed and dated Martinus de Cock. fecit in Londen den 23 Juli 1630 (inv. no. 5539). These same works, however, have also been attributed to a namesake, Marten de Cock (1605-1631), who was born in Frankfurt-am-Main and also active in the Northern Netherlands,² who may, in fact, turn out to be the same artist.

De Cock’s oeuvre consists primarily of fully worked-up, signed imaginary landscape drawings, but it also features three etchings, one of which is signed and dated 1620 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1878-A-749),³ and one painting, dated 1631, now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. no. NM 383).⁴

His drawings are executed in pen and often finished with watercolour. With lively hatchings, loops and flecks, their style is somewhat conservative and fits within the mid-sixteenth-century Flemish tradition – especially the use of blue and green watercolour washes, with distinctive repoussoir elements – rather than the style of contemporary Dutch landscape artists.⁵ Several motifs and stylistic devices in his drawings are based on the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1526/1530-1569), Hans Bol (1534-1593) and Paul Bril (1554-1626). He may have been one of the many artists who emigrated to the Dutch Republic from the Spanish Netherlands.

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

References
U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, VII (1912), p. 145 (as Marten de Cock, possibly identical to Marten de Cock (1605-1631); H. Gerson and B.W. Meijer (eds.), Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1983 (rev. edn.; orig. edn. 1942), pp. 46, 150, 471; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, IV (1951), p. 194; D. Farr and W. Bradford, The Northern Landscape: Flemish, Dutch and British Drawings from the Courtauld Collections, exh. cat. New York (Drawing Center)/London (Courtauld Institute Galleries) 1986, no. 35; Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, 94 vols., Munich 1992-, XX (1998), p. 72 (as Maerten (Maarten; Marten; Martyn) de Cock (Cockus; Cocus)

Entry

Although signed and dated at lower right, the name of the artist is difficult to read. However, despite the fact that the name of Alexander Keirincx (1600-1652) – another Antwerp-born artist active in both the Northern Netherlands and England – is inscribed no fewer than three times on the verso, the inscription should probably be read as ‘Cock f 1634’. In style, for example in the description of the foreground foliage, the drawing is most closely related to a signed and dated sheet by Marten de Cock from 1625 in the British Museum, London (inv. no. Oo,11.275).⁶ There are also similarities to a landscape by De Cock dated 1628 in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 8587).⁷ The contorted, bushy-leafed tree again recalls the forest giants in the work of Paul Bril (1554-1626).

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998

Literature

M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Artists Born between 1580 and 1600, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam 1998, no. 109

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Marten de Cock, Landscape with a Tall Tree, 1634', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.33470

(accessed 26 December 2024 17:41:40).