Portrait of a family on the terrace

Held at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, this undated terrace family portrait continues the theme Coques developed across multiple canvases — placing bourgeois families in the transitional outdoor-indoor space of an architectural terrace. The Gemäldegalerie's collection of Flemish and Dutch seventeenth-century painting is one of Europe's most comprehensive, and its acquisition of Coques works reflects consistent scholarly recognition of his importance to the development of the conversation piece as a genre. The terrace setting allowed Coques's clients to appear in an environment that implied leisure, cultivation, and property ownership simultaneously — values central to the self-image of the Antwerp merchant elite who had survived the city's political and economic turbulence of the preceding decades. Without a date, the work is likely positioned within Coques's mature period based on style and the fluency of his handling.

Paint medium is listed simply as paint, but stylistic analysis suggests an oil-based medium on a prepared ground typical of Coques's practice. The terrace architecture is handled schematically — simplified forms establishing spatial depth without overwhelming the figures — while the family grouping uses overlapping poses to suggest natural interaction.