Smith, John: A catalogue raisonné of the works of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French painters: in which is included a short biographical notice of the artists, with a copious description of their principal pictures : a statement of the prices at which such pictures have been sold at public sales on the continent and in England; a reference the the galleries and private collections in which a large portion are at present; and the names of the artists by whom they have been engraved; to which is added, a brief notice of the scholars & imitators of the great masters of the above schools (Part 4) (London: Smith and Son, 1833)

GONZALES COCQUES.

This admirable artist was born at Antwerp (a city
renowned for its eminent painters), in 1618, a period
distinguished by the most brilliant talents, literary as
well as pictatorial. His parents, who were probably
Spaniards, being ignorant of the arts, and incapable of
discerning the peculiar bent of the youth, placed him
under the tuition of David Ryekaert, a painter of
considerable powers, but whose choice of vulgar subjects
but ill accorded with the taste and genius of Gonzales :
with him he acquired the principles of the art, and an
excellent mode of painting; but as soon as circum-
stances allowed him to quit his instructor, he abandoned
low subjects, which he had been accustomed to repre-
sent, and, so far as the Writer’s experience enables him
to know, he never afterwards painted a picture of the
kind.
Attracted by the elegant portraits of Van Dyck, he
made them his models, and succeeded in forming a style
of his own, in which is embodied all the beauties of the
works of that master, in pictures of a cabinet size. His
productions usually represent family parties in the
upper ranks of society, grouped in the most pleasing
manner, either in the interior of elegant apartments,