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Art Encyclopedia:

Sir Anthony van Dyck

(b Antwerp, 22 March 1599; d London, 9 Dec 1641). Flemish painter and draughtsman, active also in Italy and England. He was the leading Flemish painter after Rubens in the first half of the 17th century and in the 18th century was often considered no less than his match. A number of van Dyck's studies in oil of characterful heads were included in Rubens's estate inventory in 1640, where they were distinguished neither in quality nor in purpose from those stocked by the older master. Although frustrated as a designer of tapestry and, with an almost solitary exception, as a deviser of palatial decoration, van Dyck succeeded brilliantly as an etcher. He was also skilled at organizing reproductive engravers in Antwerp to publish his works, in particular The Iconography (c. 1632-44), comprising scores of contemporary etched and engraved portraits, eventually numbering 100, by which election he revived the Renaissance tradition of promoting images of uomini illustri. His fame as a portrait painter in the cities of the southern Netherlands, as well as in London, Genoa, Rome and Palermo, has never been outshone; and from at least the early 18th century his full-length portraits were especially prized in Genoese, British and Flemish houses, where they were appreciated as much for their own sake as for the identities and families of the sitters.

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Biography: Anthony Van Dyck

The Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) transformed the court portrait into a vehicle of great expressiveness.

In the 17th century the city of Antwerp could boast three eminent artists - Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens - who raised Flemish painting to a level almost unequaled in Europe. The main credit for this achievement belongs to Rubens, the eldest and unquestionably the most brilliant figure of the trio. Because Van Dyck grew up in the shadow of Rubens, it is easy to underrate his genius. Van Dyck has too often been dismissed either as a facile imitator of his predecessor or as a slick and shallow painter of the aristocracy, his only real gift being an ability to flatter his patrons. This superficial judgment can no longer be seriously maintained. He was an immensely gifted and original artist who, far from being eclipsed by the overpowering personality of Rubens, succeeded in establishing his own international reputation as a portraitist of imagination and sensitivity.

Antoon van Dyck (later Anglicized as Anthony Van Dyck) was born in Antwerp in 1599, the seventh child of a prosperous merchant. In 1609 he was registered as a pupil of the minor painter Hendrik van Balen, and in 1618, not yet 19 years of age, he was accepted as a master in the Guild of St. Luke. He entered Rubens's studio as an assistant about 1617 or 1618 and remained there until late 1620.

First Antwerp Period

Van Dyck was astonishingly precocious: the appealing self-portrait in Vienna was made when he was 14 or 15. Rubens was quick to make use of this extraordinary ability. As senior assistant in his studio, the young Van Dyck collaborated in the execution of many of Rubens's larger commissions during this period. Among the works in which his hand may be observed is Rubens's great Coup de lance.

In his independent paintings at this time we see the young Van Dyck striving to become another Rubens. This is particularly true of the early religious subjects, such as St. Martin Dividing His Cloak, which are strikingly Rubens-like in color and composition. A hint of the artist's future development may be discovered in the Betrayal of Christ, which has a quality of nervous excitement that is more indicative of Van Dyck's own temperament. But it is the early portraits that reveal most clearly the poetic sensitivity that was to make Van Dyck the unrivaled interpreter of the aristocracy. Graceful, elegant, and more than a little neurotic, the self-portraits are marked by an intimacy that owes little to Rubens. Among the master-pieces of this period are the portraits of the painter Frans Snyders and his wife.

By November 1620, having entered the service of King James I, Van Dyck was in England. But he soon gave up his duties as court artist and returned to Antwerp in the spring of 1621. In October he set out for Italy, where he was to stay for 6 years.

Italian Period

Van Dyck visited Genoa, Rome, Venice, and Sicily. Artistically speaking, the most important experience was his discovery of Titian, whose influence remained with Van Dyck for the rest of his life. Although he painted some notable altarpieces, of which the Madonna of the Rosary is the most imposing, the finest works of the Italian sojourn are surely his portraits of members of the nobility; his painting of Cardinal Bentivoglio is the very model of a prince of the church, and the Marchesa Elena Grimaldi, one of a series of portraits of Genoese aristocrats, is an elegant variation on a theme by Rubens.

Second Antwerp Period

The years 1628-1632, which found Van Dyck settled once more in Antwerp, may be regarded as a kind of bourgeois interlude. Here he produced some of his most lyrical and deeply felt devotional pictures, among them the ecstatic Vision of the Blessed Herman Joseph (1630). Commissions for princely portraits were numerous: Van Dyck's sitters at this time included Marie de Médicis, Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, and the young Prince Rupert. Yet these impressive court pictures are surpassed in sympathetic understanding by his portraits of Antwerp citizens and fellow artists, such as the sculptor Colyns de Nole and his wife and daughter and the painter Martin Rijckaert. These works show with what ease Van Dyck could adapt his style to the prevailing bourgeois atmosphere of his native city. But it was his destiny to become a court artist, and when King Charles I, who had already purchased the beautiful Rinaldo and Armida, summoned him to England, Van Dyck felt obliged to answer the call.

Late Period

The climactic phase of Van Dyck's career opened in 1632 with his appointment as "principalle Paynter in ordinary to their Majesties, " Charles I and his queen, Henrietta Maria. The King received the artist with the utmost consideration, awarded him a knighthood, and showered him with commissions.

As court painter, Van Dyck did not spend all his time in England. He was in Brussels and Antwerp during much of 1634 and in October was elected honorary dean of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke. In 1640 and 1641 he made visits to Antwerp and Paris. By the latter year his health had begun to fail. He died in London in December 1641, leaving his wife, Mary Ruthven, and an infant daughter.

The favors bestowed by Charles I on Van Dyck were not misplaced, for it was at his court that the artist's genius as a portrait painter was fully realized. Three superb equestrian canvases stand out among the many royal likenesses: Charles I Hunting (Louvre, Paris), Charles I with his Equerry (Buckingham Palace, London), and Charles I on Horseback (National Gallery, London), the last recalling in some respects Titian's famous equestrian portrait of Charles V. To turn from these images of majesty to the charming pictures of the royal children is to gain a fuller understanding of the artist's humanity and perception. Still another facet of his complex personality is revealed in the beautiful double portrait of Thomas Killigrew and Thomas Carew. It was through works of this quality that Van Dyck was able to effect a revolution in English taste and to impart a new direction to English art.

Further Reading

There is no good modern biography of Van Dyck. The best book in English is still Sir Lionel Cust, Anthony van Dyck: An Historical Study of His Life and Works (1900), which presents a full and well-documented account of the artist's life but is less satisfactory in dealing with the pictures. Despite its brevity, the chapter on Van Dyck in H. Gerson and E. H. ter Kuile, Art and Architecture in Belgium, 1600-1800 (trans. 1960), offers an authoritative estimate of the painter's genius and his place in Flemish art.

Additional Sources

Brown, Christopher, Van Dyck, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983, 1982.

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Sir Anthony Van Dyck

(born March 22, 1599, Antwerp, Belg. — died Dec. 9, 1641, London, Eng.) Flemish painter. Son of a well-to-do silk merchant, he was apprenticed to an Antwerp painter at 10. He soon came under the influence of Peter Paul Rubens, for his early works are painted in Rubens's Baroque style, though with darker and warmer colour, more abrupt chiaroscuro, and more angular figures. He was a master in the Antwerp artists' guild by 19, at which time he was also working with Rubens. He spent over five years in Italy (1621 – 27); on his return, he received many commissions for altarpieces and portraits. He also executed works on mythological subjects and was a fine draftsman and etcher, but he is chiefly known for his portraits, in which he idealized his models without sacrificing their individuality. In Britain in 1632, he was appointed court painter by Charles I. He gained a comfortable income from the many portraits he painted in Britain, and his life matched his clients' in luxury. His influence was pervasive and lasting; Flemish, Dutch, and German portraitists imitated his style and technique, and the 18th-century English portraitists, especially Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, were deeply indebted to him.

For more information on Sir Anthony Van Dyck, visit Britannica.com.

 
British History: Anthony Van Dyck

Van Dyck, Anthony (1599-1641). Portrait painter. Born in Antwerp, in 1632 he became ‘Principal Painter in Ordinary’ to Charles I and was knighted in 1633, undertaking large compositions to project the mystique of the king's royalist convictions. In the course of one decade, Van Dyck mirrored the frailest of the European monarchies with such mastery that, in British portraiture, only Gainsborough and Lawrence may be considered rivals.

 
Vandyke, Sir Anthony (both: văn dīk) , 1599–1641, Flemish portrait and religious painter and etcher, b. Antwerp. In 1618 he was received as a master in the artists' guild, but even before this he produced independent paintings in his studio. For a few years he was the skilled assistant and close collaborator of Rubens. In 1620 he was summoned to England by James I, whose portrait (now lost) he painted. The next year he went to Italy, where he studied the works of the great Venetians and painted a series of portraits of the Genoese nobility. These pictures, many of them still in the palaces of the Doria, Balbi, Durazzo, and Grimaldi families, show Van Dyck's extraordinary gift for aristocratic portraiture. Van Dyck conferred upon his sitters elegance, dignity, and refinement, qualities pleasing to royalty and aristocracy. An outstanding example is the portrait of Marchesa Elena Grimaldi (National Gall., Washington, D.C.). In 1627, Van Dyck returned to Antwerp, where he rivaled Rubens in popularity and painted a famous series of religious pictures.

In 1632, Van Dyck was invited to England by Charles I. His most successful portraits of the monarch are in the Louvre and in Buckingham Palace. He was made court painter, was knighted, and was overwhelmed with commissions. Assistants were employed to enlarge his small black-and-white sketches and to paint the drapery from clothes lent by the sitter. With this preparation he was able to complete pictures very rapidly. From 1634 to 1635 he spent some time in Antwerp, where he painted his masterly Lamentation, as well as some of his best portraits.

The work of Van Dyck differs radically from that of his great master, Rubens, although it is similar in technique. The color is much more restrained, the form more refined, although his best work has an essential vigor that the English painters strove in vain to surpass. In his delineations of English aristocrats, he created a patrician image that greatly influenced the development of English portraiture. Van Dyck is well represented in the major European museums. In the United States examples are in the Art Institute of Chicago; the Fine Arts and the Gardner museums, Boston; the Frick Collection, New York City; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and many others. The Metropolitan Museum has several portraits, including those of James Stuart, the Marchesa Durazzo, and Lucas van Uffel. Van Dyck also produced a fine series of etched portraits known as the Iconography. The British Museum has an excellent collection of these prints.

Bibliography

See H. Gerson and E. H. Ter Kuile, Art and Architecture in Belgium (1960); biographies by A. McNairn (1980), C. Brown (1983), and R. Blake (2000). See also C. Brown, ed., Van Dyck: 1599–1641 (1999).

 
History 1450-1789: Anthony Van Dyck

Van Dyck, Anthony (1599–1641), Flemish painter. Born in Antwerp, Anthony van Dyck divided his career between his native Southern Netherlands, Italy, and England. Before he died at the age of forty-two, he had become the most influential portraitist in Europe. His portraits evoke the sitters' actual or desired rank as well as a sense of individuality, despite their idealization. Although he remains best known for his portraits, Van Dyck's ambition and talent extended to more prestigious history subjects, including religious and secular narratives in which he emphasized psychological states and relationships (for example, The Mystic Marriage of the Blessed Herman Joseph, 1630, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). Throughout his career Van Dyck departed from gender stereotypes more often than other artists, favoring subjects with passive men, and innovatively portrayed several women as glancing down at the viewer (for example, Marchesa Elena Grimaldi, 1623, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.).

The son of a silk merchant, Van Dyck began his professional training at the age of ten with Hendrik van Balen, the most expensive figure painter in Antwerp. While still in his teens he produced accomplished works and apparently even ran his own studio at the age of sixteen before officially becoming a master in the Guild of St. Luke. Because the young Van Dyck shifted easily between different styles, the dating of his early works remains disputed. He could adapt to the style of the older Rubens, in whose studio he worked as an assistant helping in the execution of such works as the cartoons for tapestries illustrating the history of the Roman general Decius Mus. In such cases he applied paint smoothly and depicted massive, muscular figures in a more ambiguous space than was typical of Rubens. Spatial ambiguity remained a stylistic characteristic throughout Van Dyck's career as a means of intensifying his emphasis on psychological rather than corporeal presence. Early paintings done in his own style, with oil paint applied in broader, looser strokes, reveal his lifelong admiration for the work of Titian (Betrayal of Christ, Prado, Madrid). Multiple versions exist of several early narrative subjects, the betrayal of Christ being a case in point. In planning such compositions, he made drawing after drawing to test alternative possibilities.

Portraits painted in Antwerp before 1620 (and again in 1628–1632) tend to be three-quarter length or smaller, a size suitable for the dwellings of Flemish burghers (Frans Snyders, The Frick Collection, New York). Props such as columns and flowing drapes, however, evoke the palatial settings of nobility, a status to which many of his fellow citizens aspired.

By the time Van Dyck left Antwerp in 1620, his works were as highly valued as Rubens's. He first went to England but by the end of 1621 had moved to Italy, remaining there for seven years and traveling extensively. His sketchbook (London, British Museum) records that he paid special attention to Titian. In Genoa, where he spent the most time, Van Dyck portrayed the city's nobility, such as Marchesa Elena Grimaldi (1623, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Often shown full-length, they look down at the viewer, increasing the sense of elevated rank suggested by their reserved demeanor. Faces and hands stand out against the tonalities dominated by rich reds and blacks.

In 1628 Van Dyck resettled in his native Antwerp. Visitors to his house mention a "Cabinet de Titian" in which he displayed originals by and copies after Titian. Working with softer value contrasts, Van Dyck expanded his repertoire of portrait poses for compositional reasons and to characterize sitters more fully. This is especially evident in the Iconography, a print series portraying selected European notables, including heads of state, military leaders, scholars, and, unprecedentedly in such a prestigious context, fellow artists such as Jan Brueghel the Elder. At first Van Dyck etched the portraits himself, but had the prints made by engravers after his models.

In 1632 Van Dyck moved once again to England, where art patronage now flourished at a court ruled by Charles I, a discriminating and avid art collector. The king appointed Van Dyck his "principalle" painter and knighted him, raising the artist's status closer to that of the nobility he portrayed as well as entertained. The English portraits (Portrait of King Charles I, 1635, Louvre) differ from their Genoese counterparts in having a brighter palette, a tendency to more relaxed poses, and occasional pastoral associations. They were to have an enormous influence on later English painting. In 1634–1635 Van Dyck considered resettling permanently in Antwerp but returned to England, where he lived the rest of his short life. His works remain as integral to the history of painting in England and in Italy as in his native Southern Netherlands.

Bibliography

Brown, Christopher. Van Dyck. Oxford, 1982.

Martin, John Rupert, and Gail Feigenbaum. Van Dyck as Religious Artist. Exh. cat. Princeton, 1979.

Wheelock, Arthur K., Susan J. Barnes, and Julius S. Held, eds. Anthony van Dyck. Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., 1990.

—ZIRKA ZAREMBA FILIPCZAK

 
Wikipedia: Anthony van Dyck

Sir Anthony van Dyck (many variant spellings [1] See Van Dyke for other uses of all spellings), (22 March 15999 December 1641) was a Flemish artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next 150 years. He also painted biblical and mythological subjects, displayed outstanding facility as a draftsman, and was an important innovator in watercolour and etching.

Self Portrait With a Sunflower showing the gold collar and medal Charles I gave him in 1633. The sunflower may represent the king, or royal patronage.[2]
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Self Portrait With a Sunflower showing the gold collar and medal Charles I gave him in 1633. The sunflower may represent the king, or royal patronage.[2]

Life and work

Self-portrait, 1613-14.
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Self-portrait, 1613-14.

Education

Van Dyck was born to prosperous parents in Antwerp. His talent was evident very early, and he was studying painting with Hendrick van Balen by 1609, and became an independent painter around 1615, setting up a workshop with his even younger friend Jan Brueghel the Younger.[3] By the age of fifteen he was already a highly accomplished artist, as his Self-portrait, 1613-14, shows. He was admitted to the Antwerp painters' Guild of Saint Luke as a free master by February 1618.[4] Within a few years he was to be the chief assistant to the dominant master of Antwerp, and the whole of Northern Europe, Peter Paul Rubens, who made much use of sub-contracting artists as well as his own large workshop. His influence on the young artist was immense; Rubens referred to the nineteen-year-old van Dyck as 'the best of my pupils'.[5] The origins and exact nature of their relationship are unclear; it has been speculated that Van Dyck was a pupil of Rubens from about 1613, as even his early work shows little trace of van Balen's style, but there is no clear evidence for this.[6] At the same time the dominance of Rubens in the small and declining city of Antwerp probably explains why, despite his periodic returns to the city, van Dyck spent most of his career abroad..[6] In 1620, in the Rubens' contract for the major commission for the ceiling of the Jesuit church at Antwerp (now destroyed), van Dyck is specified as one of the "discipelen" who was to execute the paintings to Rubens' designs.[7]

Italy

In 1620, at the instigation of the brother of the Duke of Buckingham, van Dyck went to England for the first time where he worked for King James I, receiving £100. [6] It was in London in the collection of Earl of Arundel that he first saw the work of Titian, whose use of color and subtle modeling of form would prove transformational, offering a new stylistic language that would enrich the compositional lessons learned from Rubens.[8]

Genoan hauteur from the Lomelli family, 1623
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Genoan hauteur from the Lomelli family, 1623

After about four months he returned to Flanders, but moved on in late 1621 to Italy, where he remained for 6 years, studying the Italian masters and beginning his career as a successful portraitist. He was already presenting himself as a figure of consequence, annoying the rather bohemian Northern artist's colony in Rome, says Bellori, by appearing with "the pomp of Xeuxis... his behaviour was that of a nobleman rather than an ordinary person, and he shone in rich garments; since he was accustomed in the circle of Rubens to noblemen, and being naturally of elevated mind, and anxious to make himself distinguished, he therefore wore - as well as silks - a hat with feathers and brooches, gold chains across his chest, and was accompanied by servants." [9]

He was mostly based in Genoa, although he also travelled extensively to other cities, and stayed for some time in Palermo in Sicily. For the Genoese aristocracy, then in a final flush of prosperity, he developed a full-length portrait style, drawing on Veronese and Titian as well as Ruben's style from his own period in Genoa, where extremely tall but graceful figures look down on the viewer with great hauteur. In 1627, he went back to Antwerp where he remained for five years, painting more affable portraits which still made his Flemish patrons look as stylish as possible. A life-size group portrait of twenty-four City Councillors of Brussels he painted for the council-chamber was destroyed in 1695.[10]. He was evidently very charming to his patrons, and, like Rubens, well able to mix in aristocratic and court circles, which added to his ability to obtain commissions. By 1630 he was described as the court painter of the Hapsburg Governor of Flanders, the Archduchess Isabella. In this period he also produced many religious works, including large altarpieces, and began his printmaking (see below).

London

The more intimate, but still elegant style he developed in England, ca 1638
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The more intimate, but still elegant style he developed in England, ca 1638

Charles I was the most passionate and generous collector of art among the English monarchs, and saw art as a way of promoting his grandiose view of the monarchy. In 1628 he bought the fabulous collection that the Gonzagas of Mantua were forced to dispose of, and he had been trying since his accession in 1625 to bring leading foreign painters to England. In 1626 he was able to persuade Orazio Gentileschi to settle in England, later to be joined by his daughter Artemesia and some of his sons. Rubens was an especial target, who eventually came on a diplomatic mission, which included painting, in 1630, and later supplied more paintings from Antwerp. He was very well treated during his nine month visit, during which he was knighted. Charles' court portraitist Daniel Mytens, was a somewhat pedestrian Fleming. Charles was extremely short (less than five foot tall) and presented challenges to a portraitist.

Van Dyck had remained in touch with the English court, and had helped Charles' agents in their search for pictures. He had also sent back some of his own works, including a portrait (1623) of himself with Endymion Porter, one of Charles's agents, a mythology (Rinaldo and Armida, 1629, now Baltimore Museum of Art), and a religious work for the Queen. He had also painted Charles's sister Elizabeth of Bohemia in the Hague in 1632. In April that year, van Dyck returned to London, and was taken under the wing of the court immediately, being knighted in July and at the same time receiving a pension of £200 per year, in the grant of which he was described as principalle Paynter in ordinary to their majesties. He was well paid for paintings in addition to this, at least in theory, as Charles did not actually pay over his pension for five years, and reduced the price of many paintings. He was provided with a house on the river at Blackfriars, then just outside the City and hence avoiding the monopoly of the Painters Guild. A suite of rooms in Eltham Palace, no longer used by the Royal family, was also provided as a country retreat. His Blackfriars studio was frequently visited by the King and Queen (later a special causeway was built to ease their access), who hardly sat for another painter whilst van Dyck lived.[6] [11]

Charles I, ca. 1635 Louvre - see text
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Charles I, ca. 1635 Louvre - see text

He was an immediate success in England, rapidly painting a large number of portraits of the King and Queen Henrietta Maria, as well as their children. Many portraits were done in several versions, to be sent as diplomatic gifts or given to supporters of the increasingly embattled king. Altogether van Dyck has been estimated to have painted forty portraits of Charles himself, as well as about thirty of the Queen, nine of Earl of Strafford and multiple ones of other courtiers. [12] He painted many of the court, and also himself and his mistress, Margaret Lemon. In England he developed a version of his style which combined a relaxed elegance and ease with an understated authority in his subjects which was to dominate English portrait-painting to the end of the 18th century. Many of these portraits have a lush landscape background. His portraits of Charles on horseback updated the grandeur of Titian's Charles V, but even more effective and original is his portrait of Charles dismounted in the Louvre: "Charles is given a totally natural look of instinctive sovereignty, in a deliberately informal setting where he strolls so negligently that that he seems at first glance nature's gentleman rather than England's king" [13] Although his portraits have created the classic idea of "Cavalier" style and dress, in fact a majority of his most important patrons in the nobility, such as Lord Wharton and the Earls of Bedford, Northumberland and Pembroke, took the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War that broke out soon after his death.[14]

Van Dyck became a "denizen", effectively a citizen, in 1638 and married Mary, the daughter of Lord Ruthven and a Lady in waiting to the Queen, in 1639-40; this may have been instigated by the King in an attempt to keep him in England.[6] He had spent most of 1634 in Antwerp, returning the following year, and in 1640-41, as the Civil War loomed, spent several months in Flanders and France. He left again in the summer of 1641, but fell seriously ill in Paris and returned hurriedly to London, where he died soon after in his house at Blackfriars.[15] He left a daughter each by his wife and mistress, the first only ten days old. Both were provided for, and both ended up living in Flanders.[16]

He was buried in Old St. Paul's Cathedral, where the king erected a monument in his memory:

Anthony returned to England, and shortly afterwards he died in London, piously rendering his spirit to God as a good Catholic, in the year 1641. He was buried in St. Paul's, to the sadness of the king and court and the universal grief of lovers of painting. For all the riches he had acquired, Anthony van Dyck left little property, having spent everything on living magnificently, more like a prince than a painter.[17]

Portraits and other works

Samson and Delilah, ca. 1630. A strenuous history painting in the manner of Rubens; the saturated use of color reveals van Dyck's study of Titian.
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Samson and Delilah, ca. 1630. A strenuous history painting in the manner of Rubens; the saturated use of color reveals van Dyck's study of Titian.

With the partial exception of Holbein, van Dyck and his exact contemporary Velasquez were the first painters of pre-eminent talent to work mainly as Court portraitists. The slightly younger Rembrandt was also to work mainly as a portraitist for a period. In the contemporary theory of the Hierarchy of genres portrait-painting came well below History painting (which covered religious scenes also), and for most major painters portraits were a relatively small part of their output, in terms of the time spent on them (being small, they might be numerous in absolute terms). Rubens for example mostly painted portraits only of his immediate circle, but though he worked for most of the courts of Europe, he avoided exclusive attachment to any of them.

A variety of factors meant that in the 17th century demand for portraits was stronger than for other types of work. Van Dyck tried to persuade Charles to commission him to do a large-scale series of works on the history of the Order of the Garter for the Banqueting House, Whitehall, for which Rubens had earlier done the huge ceiling paintings (sending them from Antwerp).

Henrietta Maria and the dwarf, Sir Jeffrey Hudson, 1633
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Henrietta Maria and the dwarf, Sir Jeffrey Hudson, 1633

A sketch for one wall remains, but by 1638 Charles was too short of money to proceed.[6] This was a problem Velasquez did not have, but equally van Dyck's daily life was not encumbered by trivial court duties as Velasquez's was. In his visits to Paris in his last years van Dyck tried to obtain the commission to paint the Grande Gallerie of the Louvre without success.[18]

A list of history paintings produced by van Dyck in England survives, by Bellori, based on information by Sir Kenelm Digby; none of these still appear to survive, although the Eros and Psyche done for the King (below) does.[6] But many other works, rather more religious than mythological, do survive, and though they are very fine, they do not reach the heights of Velasquez's history paintings. Earlier ones remain very much within the style of Rubens, although some of his Sicilian works are interestingly individual.

Van Dyck's portraits certainly flattered more than Velasquez's; when Sophia, later Electoress of Hanover, first met Queen Henrietta Maria, in exile in Holland in 1641, she wrote: "Van Dyck's handsome portraits had given me so fine an idea of the beauty of all English ladies, that I was surprised to find that the Queen, who looked so fine in painting, was a small woman raised up on her chair, with long skinny arms and teeth like defence works projecting from her mouth..." [6] Some critics have blamed van Dyck for diverting a nascent tougher English portrait tradition, of painters such as William Dobson, Robert Walker and Issac Fuller into what certainly became elegant blandness in the hands of many of van Dyck's successors, like Lely or Kneller.[6] The conventional view has always been more favourable: "When Van Dyck came hither he brought Face-Painting to us; ever since which time … England has excel'd all the World in that great Branch of the Art’ (Jonathan Richardson: An Essay on the Theory of Painting, 1715, 41). Thomas Gainsborough is reported to have said on his deathbed "We are all going to heaven, and Van Dyck is of the Company."[19]

A fairly small number of landscape pen and wash drawings or watercolours made in England played an important part in introducing the Flemish watercolour landscape tradition to England. Some are studies, which reappear in the background of paintings, but many are signed and dated and were probably regarded as finished works to be given as presents. Several of the most detailed are of Rye, a port for ships to the Continent, suggesting that van Dyck did them casually whilst waiting for wind or tide to improve.[20]

Printmaking

Probably during his period in Antwerp after his return from Italy, van Dyck began his Iconography, eventually a very large series of prints with half-length portraits of eminent contemporaries. Van Dyck produced drawings, and for eighteen of the portraits he himself etched with great brilliance the heads and the main outlines of the figure, for an engraver to work up: "Portrait etching had scarcely had an existence before his time, and in his work it suddenly appears at the highest point ever reached in the art" [21]

Pieter Brueghel the Younger from the Iconography; etching by Van Dyck (only)
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Pieter Brueghel the Younger from the Iconography; etching by Van Dyck (only)

However for most of the series he left the whole printmaking work to specialists, who mostly engraved everything after his drawings. His own etched plates appear not to have been published commercially until after his death, and early states are very rare.[22] Most of his plates were printed after only his work had been done; some exist in further states after engraving had been added, sometimes obscuring his etching. He continued to add to the series until at least his departure for England, and presumably added Inigo Jones whilst in London.

The series was a great success, but was his only venture into printmaking; portraiture probably paid better, and he was constantly in demand. At his death there were eighty plates by others, of which fifty-two were of artists, as well as his own eighteen. The plates were bought by a publisher; with the plates reworked periodically as they wore out they continued to be printed for centuries, and the series added to, so that it reached over two hundred portraits by the late 18th century. In 1851 the plates were bought by the Calcographie du Louvre.[23]

The Iconography was highly influential as a commercial model for reproductive printmaking; now forgotten series of portrait prints were enormously popular until the advent of photography:"the importance of this series was enormous, and it provided a repertory of images that were plundered by portrait painters throughout Europe over the next couple of centuries."[24] Van Dyck's brilliant etching style, which depended on open lines and dots, was in marked contrast to that of the other great portraitist in prints of period, Rembrandt, and had little influence until the 19th century, when it had a great influence on artists such as Whistler in the last major phase of portrait etching. [21] Hyatt Mayor wrote: "Etchers have studied Van Dyck ever since, for they can hope to approximate his brilliant directness, whereas nobody can hope to approach the complexity of Rembrandt's portraits"[25]

Studio

This triple portrait of Charles I was sent to Rome for Bernini to model a bust on
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This triple portrait of Charles I was sent to Rome for Bernini to model a bust on

His great success compelled van Dyck to maintain a large workshop in London, a studio which was to become "virtually a production line for portraits". According to a visitor to his studio he usually only made a drawing on paper, which was then enlarged onto canvas by an assistant; he then painted the head himself. The clothes were left at the studio and often sent out to specialists.[26] In his last years these studio collaborations accounted for some decline in the quality of work.[27] In addition many copies untouched by him, or virtually so, were produced by the workshop, as well as by professional copyists and later painters; the number of paintings ascribed to him had by the 19th century become huge, as with Rembrandt, Titian and others. However most of his assistants and copyists could not approach the refinement of his manner, so compared to many masters consensus among art historians on attributions to him is usually relatively easy to reach, and museum labelling is now mostly updated (country house attributions may be more dubious in some cases). The relatively few names of his assistants that are known are Dutch or Flemish; he probably preferred to use trained Flemings, as no English equivalent training yet existed.[6] Adiaen Hanneman (1604-71) returned to his native Hague in 1638 to become the leading portraitist there.[28] Van Dyck's enormous influence of English art does not come from a tradition handed down through his pupils; in fact it is not possible to document a connection to his studio for any English painter of any significance.[6]

Other uses of van Dyke

  • Van Dyck painted many portraits of men, notably Charles I and himself, with the short, pointed beards then in fashion; consequently this particular kind of beard was much later (probably first in America in the 19th century) named a vandyke (which is the anglicized version of his name).
SchoolofVanDyckLabel.jpg
  • During the reign of George III, a generic "Cavalier" fancy-dress costume called a Van Dyke was popular; Gainsborough's 'Blue Boy' is wearing such a Van Dyke outfit.
  • The oil paint pigment van Dyck brown is named after him [1], and Van dyke brown is an early photographic printing process using the same colour.
  • See also several people and places under Van Dyke, the more common form in English of the same original name.

Collections

Most major museum collections include at least one Van Dyck, but easily the most outstanding collection is the Royal Collection, which still contains many of his paintings of the Royal Family. The National Gallery, London (fourteen works), The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and the Frick Collection have splendid examples of all phases of his portrait style.

Gallery

References

    See also

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    Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
    Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
    Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
    British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
    Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
    History 1450-1789. Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
    Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Anthony van Dyck" Read more

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