Rijksmuseum

Object data

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

height 213 mm × width 337 mm

Inscriptions

signed and dated: lower right, in brown ink, Cock fecit. / 1628
inscribed on verso, in pencil: lower centre, in a modern hand, 41; lower right, in a nineteenth-century hand, CW or CM (initials); next to that, possibly in a nineteenth-century hand, No 55
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: none

Provenance

…; collection Princes of Liechtenstein, Vaduz;¹…; from Cassirer Gallery, Zurich, fl. 400, to the museum (L. 2228), 1948

Object number: RP-T-1948-388

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).² 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,³ 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),⁴ and one painting, dated 1631, now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. no. NM 383).⁵

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.⁶ 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

The composition is indebted to, but not directly copied from, a large print, Landscape with Pan and Syrinx, by Guilliam van Nieulandt II (1584-1634) after Paul Bril (1554-1626), of which an impression of the first state is in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-P-1976-200).⁷ The drawing that comes closest to the Amsterdam sheet in technique and style is Landscape with a Farm by the Banks of a River in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels (inv. no. 4060/900),⁸ which is virtually the same size and is also dated 1628.

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998

Literature

Tentoonstelling van aanwinsten uit de verzameling van de Vorst van Liechtenstein, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1953, no. 57; B.P.J. Broos, ‘“Notitie der Teekeningen van Sybrand Feitama”, III. De verzameling van Sybrand I Feitama (1620-1701) en van Isaac Feitama (1666-1709)’, Oud Holland 101 (1987), no. 3, p. 188; M. Schapelhouwman and P. Schatborn, Land en water. Hollandse tekeningen uit de 17de eeuw in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Zwolle 1987, p. 20; O. Le Bihan, L’Or et l’ombre: Catalogue critique et raisonné des peintures hollandaises du dix-septième et du dix-huitième siècles, conservées au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, coll. cat. Bordeaux 1990, p. 86 (n. 27); M. Bisanz Prakken, Die Landschaft im Jahrhundert Rembrandts: Niederländische Zeichnungen des 17. Jahrhunderts aus der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina, exh. cat. Vienna (Albertina) 1993, p. 36, under no. 12 (n. 3); 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. 108; M. Bisanz-Prakken, Rembrandt and his Time: Masterworks from the Albertina, Vienna, exh. cat. Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum) 2005-06, p. 34, under no. 9 (n. 3)

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Marten de Cock, Two Anglers in a Wooded Landscape with a Waterfall, 1628', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.33476

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