COQUES, Gonzales

After the middle of the seventeenth century Coques painted numerous family portraits located in a park or on the terrace of a palatial building. The family groups are usually rather more deeply in the composition than in his earlier works, and the figures are located at different levels in the composition, giving a stronger treatment of space. After 1660 the architectural elements and sculptural ornaments, as, for example, in the Family Group, emphatically express the preference for a more theatrical style.

In the present painting the identity of the family has not been established. The youngest child is being pushed along in a ‘loopstoel’. The girl on the right plays an instrument which is probably a cittern. The older girl picks roses; because they are the flowers of Venus, the goddess of Love, this action may be a reference to her forthcoming marriage.

The landscape and trees in this work are possibly by another artist.

The picture shows the equestrian portrait of an unidentified elegant couple with their blackamoor servant. Like in Coques’s other portrait the influence of Van Dyck can be observed in the present painting. The artist has posthumously been granted the nickname ‘Little van Dyck’.

In the first half of the seventeenth century cabinet-sized portraits were created in Antwerp which can be regarded as the forerunners of the later conversation pieces. (Example: The Painter and His Family by Teniers.) In these pictures people are shown interacting in a room or a garden. Partly because of their small size and their picturesque representation of decor and emblematic attributes and details, these pictures have very distinct genre characteristics and are sometimes called ‘genre portraits’.

Gonzales Coques is the real creator and most prominent representative of the conversation piece. From the start he specialized in cabinet-sized group portraits. His earliest work, of the 1640s, includes scenes located in a room with the background painted in great detail. The figures portrayed are shown fairly large, and situated close to the foreground in the parlours of prosperous burghers of Antwerp of the time. In these early portraits by Coques it is noticeable that there are no interactions between the characters, they look out of the painting in isolation.

After 1640 Coques gradually attained a manner of presentation in which more numerous figures were linked to each other by a well-conceived exchange of gestures and glances, in other words, they appear to be in conversation. Family Group in a Landscape is the first dated work illustrating this change in Coques’s style. The painter is here inspired by the poses and expression of portraits by Van Dyck.

The painting presumably shows Jacques van Eyck, the chief justice of Antwerp in the bosom of his family. They gather on the terrace of their palace. The painting is relatively small but is provided with some essential attributes of the representative Baroque portrait.

It is noticeable in this painting that the strong perspective based on the central axis has still retained its traditional character. The architecture of the ostentatious hall, with their great columns, cornices and sculptured ornamentation represent the Late Baroque sense of theatrical opulence.

Coques’s share in this and similar compositions was mainly limited to the portraits of the collectors; it has been demonstrated that the architecture was the work of specialized painters such as Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg. But neither are the ‘paintings within the painting’ Coques’s work; on the contrary, these are small-sized copies executed in their own hands by the painters of the original works.

The identity of the sitter of this small oval portrait of a young man, holding his lapel, is not known.

In the first half of the seventeenth century cabinet-sized portraits were created in Antwerp which can be regarded as the forerunners of the later conversation pieces. (Example: The Painter and His Family by Teniers.) In these pictures people are shown interacting in a room or a garden. Partly because of their small size and their picturesque representation of decor and emblematic attributes and details, these pictures have very distinct genre characteristics and are sometimes called ‘genre portraits’.

Gonzales Coques is the real creator and most prominent representative of the conversation piece. From the start he specialized in cabinet-sized group portraits. His earliest work, of the 1640s, includes scenes located in a room with the background painted in great detail. The figures portrayed are shown fairly large, and situated close to the foreground in the parlours of prosperous burghers of Antwerp of the time. One striking work from these early years of Coques’s career is the Young Scholar and his Sister.

In these early portraits by Coques it is noticeable that there are no interactions between the characters, they look out of the painting in isolation. After 1640 Coques gradually attained a manner of presentation in which more numerous figures were linked to each other by a well-conceived exchange of gestures and glances, in other words, they appear to be in conversation.