Marten Rijckaert

Variant namesprimary name: Marten Rijckaert spelling variant: Marten Ryckaert

DatesBiographical dates: 1587 - 1631 Dead: dead 1631-10 Born: born before 1587-12-08 Active period: active 1607 - 1631

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BiographyBiography: Landscape painter and draughtsman. A member of an extended Antwerp family of artists, Marten was the son of the painter and picture dealer David Rijckaert I. He was registered as a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1607, admitted as a master’s son (“meestersonnen”). His training is undocumented; two of his paintings are dated as early as “1602” when he was only thirteen years of age. It has been suggested that, in addition to working in his father’s studio, Marten may have been taught by Antwerp landscape painter Tobias Verhaecht, who ran an important studio. Soon after becoming a master, he apparently travelled to Italy and Rome, where he came under the influence of his compatriot, the landscape painter Paul Bril, who had settled there by 1582. Rijckaert was active in Italy until c. 1611/1612, when he returned to his native city. From 1621 until 1628 he is documented as an active member of the painters’ Guild; in 1620 he became a member of the local chamber of rhetoric, De Violieren. A pupil was registered with the Guild in 1631, the year of his decease. A portrait of Rijckaert, accompanied by the inscription, “Martinus Rychart, Uninamus, Pictor Ruralium Prospectuum Antverpiae”, was etched by Jacob Neefs for Anthony van Dyck’s Iconography. Influenced by the landscapes of Joos de Momper II, Paul Bril and Jan Brueghel I, Rijckaert specialized in cabinet-sized mountain landscapes, sweeping panoramic views of wooded slopes and river valleys, often with striking jagged rock formations with sharp outlines, waterfalls, sometimes with scattered Italianizing classical ruins, and with small-scale Biblical staffage, which look back to an earlier, 16th century, Mannerist tradition of Pieter Bruegel I and Lucas van Valckenborch. Rijckaert’s was a traditional arrangement with a high and steeply rising horizon, the planes separated by a standard three-colour scheme (brown-green-blue) and fantastical mountain massifs, but with Italianate landscape details betraying the influence of Bril. From his presumed teacher, Verhaecht, he adopted a preference for fantastical rock formations with waterfalls and the cool, pale green employed in his landscapes. Rijckaert’s oeuvre is ill defined and his rare surviving paintings, occasionally signed by the artist’s monogram and dated mostly between 1616 and 1626, have often been mistaken for those of his better known contemporaries, Bril, Willem van Nieulandt and Anton Mirou.

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