Marten Ryckaert

Marten Ryckaert or Maerten Ryckaert[1] (baptised 8 December 1587, Antwerp – 11 October 1631), was a Flemish landscape painter. He was known for his small, usually imaginary landscapes in an Italianate style.

Marten Ryckaert by Anthony van Dyck

Life

Marten Ryckaert was a member of the Ryckaert (or Rijckaert) family of artists. He was born in Antwerp in 1587 as the second child of David Rijckaert the Elder and Catharina Rem.[2] David the Elder was a brewer and a painter of wooden statues who had become a master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1585.[3] He is also mentioned as a dealer in paintings.[2] David Rijckaert II had 7 siblings of whom his older brother David the Younger (born in 1586) became a prominent still life painter.[2] He was the uncle of David Ryckaert III, a genre painter.[4] As the result of a birth defect or because of an accident, he had only one arm.

River landscape with the Flight into Egypt

Marten probably first studied with his father and was later a pupil of Tobias Verhaecht (or Verhaeght).[5] Verhaecht was also Peter Paul Rubens’s teacher for a brief period. Marten became a member of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1607.

It is believed he traveled to Italy between 1607 and 1610 although no documentary evidence of this trip has been found. It is believed that during his stay in Italy he practised plein air sketching.[6] Marten rejoined the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1611 and was registered as the "painter with one arm".[7] He spent the remainder of his professional career in his native city. He was active in the local Chamber of rhetoric De Violieren.[8] He never married and collected many paintings by his contemporaries in his house in the Meyerstraat in Antwerp.[9]

Landscape in the Rhine valley

He was reportedly a close friend of Anthony van Dyck, who painted his portrait showing Ryckaert dressed up as a king around 1630. This portrait was in the possession of Marten Ryckaert when he died and is today in the Prado in Madrid.[10] The portrait was engraved by Jacob Neefs and then included in van Dyck's book project entitled "Iconography" which contained portraits of famous people of that time.[11]

Ryckaert fell ill in early 1631 and is buried in Antwerp on 11 October. He left his entire fortune to his sister Maria and his brother Pauwel (or Pauwels).[10]

Work

His sparse surviving works mainly depict imaginary landscapes with forests, often with waterfalls, rocks, ruins, architecture and small human figures. Marten Ryckaert’s work shows similarities with that of the Antwerp painter Joos de Momper[12] and also to that of Paul Bril and Jan Brueghel [13]

Landscape with a farmer plowing and the fall of Icarus

It is difficult to assess the stylistic development of his work. The landscapes are in an Italianate style and thus resemble those of the Rome-based Flemish landscape painter Paul Bril.[10] This is particularly true for works from the period following his return from his presumed trip to Italy as Paul Bril's prints of Roman-style landscapes were widely disseminated in Antwerp at this time. The placement, style and grouping of the figures in the landscapes are indebted to Jan Brueghel the Elder.[6] This is most obvious in works such as the Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (in a private collection) that is based on a lost original by Brueghel, although Ryckaert did not slavishly copy Brueghel's invention. The colour treatment resembles that of Joos de Momper.[10]

His style of painting became gradually obsolete during his own lifetime and was replaced by the Baroque style, which was characterized by a greater realism, greater scale, warmer colours and transparent light.[8]

A rocky landscape with figures by an iron foundry

His composition A rocky landscape with figures by an iron foundry has long been regarded as one of the oldest paintings of a blast furnace and refinery in Europe.[14]

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References
  1. Also called: Marten or Martin Rijckaert
  2. Frans Jozef Peter Van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, Antwerpen, 1883, p. 601-603 (in Dutch)
  3. Bernadette Van Haute. David III Ryckaert: A Seventeenth-Century Flemish Painter of Peasant Scenes. Volume 1, Doctoral thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Literature and Philosophy at the University of South Africa, November 1996, pp. 10-12
  4. Frans Jozef Peter Van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, Antwerpen, 1883, p. 754, 1059–1060 (in Dutch)
  5. The Collector's Cabinet: Flemish Paintings from New England Private Collections, University of Massachusetts Press, 1983
  6. Martin Ryckaert (Antwerp 1587-1631), An extensive mountainous landscape with figures on horseback and others resting in the foreground, a winding river and a town beyond at Christie's
  7. Biographical details at the Netherlands Institute for Art History (in Dutch)
  8. Biographical details at the Nouvelle Biographie Nationale (in French)
  9. Martin Ryckaert in Wurzbach, Alfred von [Bearb.], Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon: mit mehr als 3000 Monogrammen (Band 2): L - Z, Amsterdam, 1910 (in German)
  10. Sotheby's Important Old Master Paintings, Including European Works of Art, New York | 29 janv. 2009
  11. Moir, Alfred, Anthony van Dyck, Thames and Hudson, London, 1994, p. 98
  12. Landschap, Marten Rijckaert Archived 10 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine at Het Gulden Cabinet (in Dutch)
  13. Hans Vlieghe (1998), Flemish Art and Architecture 1585-1700; Yale University Press, New Haven, 1998 ISBN 0-300-07038-1
  14. Marten Ryckaert , A rocky landscape with figures by an iron foundry, a river and houses on the bank beyond at Christie's

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