A family on a terrace

Undated and painted on panel, this outdoor family scene belongs to a distinct sub-genre Coques developed: the terrace portrait, where figures are placed in a transitional space between interior domesticity and open garden, allowing landscape elements to enrich what might otherwise be a plain interior group. The setting on a terrace — with its implied architecture, balusters, and views — was a convention borrowed partly from the grand manner of Van Dyck and adapted by Coques to the smaller scale and mercantile tone of his Antwerp clientele. The Liechtenstein Museum's collection, one of Europe's finest repositories of Flemish Baroque painting, holds this work among a broader group of small-format cabinet pictures. The outdoor setting permitted Coques to introduce natural light that warmed his palette and gave sitters an air of aristocratic ease that purely indoor settings struggled to convey at small scale.

Panel support provides a stable, slightly absorbent ground suited to the fine brushwork Coques required for lace, embroidery, and facial modelling. The terrace architecture is rendered schematically to avoid competing with the figures, while the sky beyond is painted with loose horizontal strokes that suggest depth without detailed cloud formation.