Rijksmuseum

Object data

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

height 93 mm × width 135 mm

Inscriptions

dated and inscribed by the artist: lower right, in brown ink, 1625 (?). Copenhage
inscribed on verso: upper centre, possibly in an eighteenth-century hand, in red chalk, M Cock
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: coat of arms, surmounted by a crown (small fragment)

Condition

Thin spots in the corners

Provenance

…; sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 5 June 1905 sqq., no. 1224, fl. 9, to the museum (L. 2228)

Object number: RP-T-1906-21

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

The last digit of the date could be read as a ‘3’, but I believe it to be a ‘5’, suggesting a date a year later than that of inv. no. RP-T-1881-A-152. Although the present sheet is inscribed as if executed in Copenhagen, the round tower is unlikely to depict an actual site in Denmark and was probably a motif drawn from the artist’s imagination or based on an earlier published source. It is very similar, for instance, to the building in an etching in a series by Guilliam van Nieulandt II (1584-1634) depicting Roman antiquities (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-4150).⁶

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998

Literature

M. 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. 85 (n. 23); 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. 107

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Marten de Cock, Landscape with the Ruins of a Round Tower, 1625', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.33480

(accessed 26 November 2024 08:30:01).