Gonzalez Coques (1615 – Antwerp – 1684)

A portrait of a gentleman

oil on copper
4 ½ x 3 ⅛ inches (11.5 x 8.2 cm.)

Provenance:
Private Collection, Great Britain.

There is uncertainty about Gonzalez Coques’ date of birth: van Lerius claimed to have found his name in a baptismal register for the year 1614, however, an inscription on an engraved self-portrait of 1649 states that he was born in 1618: and, in 1666, the artist claimed to be 48 years old.  Coques was a pupil of Pieter Brueghel the Younger in 1626/27 and later of David Ryckaert the Younger.  It has been suggested that Coques visited England before joining the Antwerp guild of St. Luke in 1641.  In 1643, he married Catharina Ryckaert, daughter of his former teacher, by whom he had two daughters.  He died in Antwerp and was buried in the St. Joriskerk on April 18, 1684.

Through the mid to late 1640s, Coques traveled frequently to the Northern Netherlands where he worked for the Dutch Stadholder, Frederick Hendrik and his wife, Amalia van Solms.  He painted portraits and a pastoral scene for the royal couple, for which in 1647 he was awarded a gold chain by the Stadholder.  In the same year he was asked to design ten paintings illustrating the story of Psyche for the Stadholder’s palace at Honselaersdijk.  However, the prestigious commission turned sour when the preparatory sketches, which he had subcontracted to his fellow townsman, Abraham van Diepenbeeck, were recognized as copies after Raphael’s fresco cycle in the Villa Farnesina in Rome.  Coques immediately fled to Antwerp where he was involved in a lawsuit with Diepenbeeck for a number of years.  Despite this scandal, Coques was a respected member of the artistic community in Antwerp and served twice as dean of the artists’ guild.  He was also a member of two rhetoricians’ societies and, in 1661, was praised by Cornelis de Bie, whose book includes an engraved portrait of the artist. 

Known as the “petit Van Dyck” because of his elegant small-scale compositions, Coques was a favored portraitist among the patrician class in the Southern Netherlands, as well as in England, Holland, and Germany.  His portraits of individuals reveal the influence not only of Anthony van Dyck, but also the Dutch masters of small-scale portraiture such as Thomas de Keyser and Gerard ter Borch.