Matthijs Cock (Antwerp circa 1509-before 1548)

A town in an extensive river landscape, mountains beyond

Details

Matthijs Cock (Antwerp circa 1509-before 1548)
A town in an extensive river landscape, mountains beyond
dated '1540' and with inscription 'Herry Bles.'
black chalk, pen and brown ink, white, yellow and pink bodycolour, on light brown paper, pen and brown ink framing lines at top, bottom and right margins
6 7/8 x 9 7/8 in. (17.4 x 25.1 cm.)

Provenance

C.R. Rudolf (L. 2811b).
With Alfred Brod, London, 1969.
Professor Einar Perman; Sotheby Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, 9 June 1975, lot 7.
The British Rail Pension Fund; Sotheby's, New York, 8 January 1991, lot 31.

Literature

J.O. Hand, in exhib. cat., The Age of Bruegel: Netherlandish Drawings in the Sixteenth Century, Washington, 1986, p. 112, note 1.

Exhibited

London, The Arts Council Gallery, Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Mr. C.R. Rudolf, 1962, no. 93.
Austin, Texas, Archer M. Huntingdon Art Gallery, Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Drawings, 1981-82, no. 6.
Norwich, Castle Museum, The Northern Eye, 1987, not numbered.

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Lot Essay

This is a characteristic example of Matthijs Cock's draughtsmanship, in which the foreground and buildings are shaded with closely-spaced horizontal hatching. Approximately fifteen drawings by Cock are known and of these two others are also dated 1540: Landscape with a castle above a harbour in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (inv. 1978.19.2; illustrated in The Age of Bruegel, exhib. cat., no. 34; Christie's, London, 27 November 1973, lot 203) and the Coastal Scene at the Victoria and Albert Museum (The Age of Bruegel, op. cit., p. 112, fig. 1).

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