with inscription ‘ans bol I f’
black chalk, point of the brush and watercolour, pen and brown ink framing lines
20 x 29.5 cm

Provenance:
The ‘Llanover Album’, assembled in the 18th century, probably by Sir Anthony Westcombe, Bart. (died 1752), and by descent to
Ivon John Caradoc Herbert, 1st (and last) Baron Treowen (1851-1933), Llanover House, Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Bruton & Knowles, 26 June 1934, part of lot 997 (bought by R.E.A. Wilson and Alfred Jowett).
Anonymous sale [Baron Paul Hatvany]; Sotheby's, London, 7 July 1966, lot 18 (as Matthijs Cock; £420 to G.S. Palmer).
Anonymous sale; Christie’s, London, 26 and 27 November 1973, lot 205 (as Matthijs Cock; 1200 gns to Hardy).

Literature:
A.E. Popham, ‘Mr Alfred Jowett’s Collection of Drawings at Killinghall’, Apollo, 1938 (March), p. 137 (as Matthijs Cock).



This detailed panoramic landscape drawing comes from an album known as the ‘Llanover Album’ which was assembled in the 18th century, probably by Sir Anthony Westcombe (died 1752). The album passed down through his family 1934, when it was sold at auction to Alfred Jowett. The album contained around 250 Dutch and Flemish landscape drawings from the 16th and 17th centuries, of which examples can now be found in a number of institutions including the Morgan Library and Museum (Roelant Savery; inv. 1980.22 and Hendrik Hondius; inv. 1978.40), the British Museum, London (Abraham Casembroot, Gillis van Coninxloo, Cornelis Liefrinck and Lodewijk Toeput; 1935,0413.3-6) and the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Matthijs Cock; inv. 1978.19.2).
The present drawing, together with the one now in Washington, was published and attributed to Matthijs Cock for the first time by A.E. Popham in 1938 [1]. Due to the small number of drawings by Matthijs (or indeed any early Netherlandish artist) that have survived, attributions to the artist should be approached with caution. That said, the present drawing finds a particularly close comparison with a drawing by Matthijs [2] (Fig. 1), also executed with the point of the brush, which was used by his brother Hieronymus for an etching.[3] The rendering of the rocks, the suggestion of brickwork in the architecture with long horizontal lines and short vertical strokes and the way the reflection in the water is rendered with parallel strokes shown here are particularly close to the sheet in the Rijksmuseum. These similarities do seem to indicate that the drawing was either executed by an artist from Matthijs’ close circle, or indeed by the artist himself as suggested by Popham.
Matthijs and his younger brother Hieronymus played an important part in the transformation of landscape drawing in the first half of the 16th century; the elder brother through his drawn inventions, and the younger brother through his prints after these inventions which were widely dispersed through his publishing house Aux Quatre Vents. Their landscapes marked a departure from the so-called ‘Weltlandschaft’ (in which imaginary panoramic landscapes took centre stage) dominant in landscape art from the generation before. Instead, their landscapes gained a greater sense of realism with a lowered viewpoint that allowed the viewer to see the landscape from up close. The present drawing, a rare survivor from this period, finds itself in between these two approaches; while the foreground is rather worked out, showing both architecture and figures wandering around, it still retains the high viewpoint and panoramic vista characteristic of the ‘Weltlandschaft’ from the previous generation.

Fig. 1. Matthijs Cock, A coastal landscape with Saint Cristopher, point of the brush and brown and grey wash, 15.1 x 23.5 cm.


[1] A.E. Popham, 'op. cit.', Apollo, 1938 (March), p. 137.
[2] Inv. RP-T-2014-61
[3] V. D’haene, ‘‘‘Landscapes in the New Italian or Antique Way’’, The Drawn oeuvre of Matthijs Cock Reconsidered’, Master Drawings, 2012, L, no. 3, p. 297, figs. 1 and 3.