Anthony van Dyck

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Anthony van Dyck (Dutch pronunciation: [vn di

k], many

Anthony van Dyck

variant spellings;[1] 22 March 1599 9 December 1641) was a

Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in
England, after enjoying great success in Italy and Flanders. 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 inuence on English portrait-painting for the next
150 years. He also painted biblical and mythological subjects,
displayed outstanding facility as a draughtsman, and was an
important innovator in watercolour and etching.

Self-Portrait With a Sunower (after 1633)

Contents
1 Life and work
1.1 Education
1.2 Italy
1.3 London
2 Portraits and other works
3 Printmaking
4 Studio
5 Inuences in other elds
6 Collections
7 Gallery
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References
11 External links

Born

Antoon van Dyck

22 March 1599
Antwerp, Spanish Netherlands
(modern-day Belgium)

Died

9 December 1641 (aged42)

London

Nationality Flemish
Education Hendrick van Balen,
Peter Paul Rubens
Knownfor Painting
Movement Baroque

Life and work

Education
Antoon van Dyck (his Flemish name) 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.[2] By the age of fteen he was
already a highly accomplished artist, as his Self-portrait, 161314, shows.[3] 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-contracted artists as well as his own large workshop. His inuence 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

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 Rubens's contract for
the major commission for the ceiling of the Carolus Borromeuskerk, the
Jesuit church at Antwerp (lost to re in 1718), van Dyck is specied as one
of the "discipelen" who was to execute the paintings to Rubens' designs.[7]

Italy
In 1620, at the instigation of George
Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham,
van Dyck went to England for the
rst time where he worked for King
James I of England, receiving
100.[6] It was in London in the
collection of the Earl of Arundel that
Self-portrait, 161314
he rst saw the work of Titian,
whose use of colour and subtle
modeling of form would prove transformational, offering a new stylistic
language that would enrich the compositional lessons learned from
Rubens.[8]
After about four months he returned to Flanders, but moved on in late 1621
Genoan hauteur from the Lomellini
to Italy, where he remained for 6 years, studying the Italian masters and
family, 1623
beginning his career as a successful portraitist. He was already presenting
himself as a gure of consequence, annoying the rather bohemian Northern
artist's colony in Rome, says Giovan Pietro Bellori, by appearing with "the pomp of Zeuxis ... 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 woreas well as silksa 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 nal ush of prosperity, he developed a full-length portrait
style, drawing on Veronese and Titian as well as Rubens' style from his own period in Genoa, where extremely tall
but graceful gures look down on the viewer with great hauteur. In 1627, he went back to Antwerp where he
remained for ve 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 Habsburg 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
King Charles I was the most passionate and generous collector of art among the British monarchs, and saw art as a
way of promoting his elevated 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 Artemisia and some of

his daughter Artemisia 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's court
portraitist, Daniel Mytens, was a
somewhat pedestrian Dutchman.
Charles was very short (less than 5
feet (1.5m) tall) and presented
challenges to a portraitist.
Van Dyck had remained in touch
with the English court, and had
Anthony van Dyck, by Peter Paul
helped King Charles's agents in
Rubens (162728) in the Louvre
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
The more intimate, but still elegant
Charles's agents, a mythology (Rinaldo and Armida, 1629, now in the
style he developed in England, c.
Baltimore Museum of Art), and a religious work for the Queen. He had also
1638
painted Charles's sister, Queen 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 King Charles did not actually pay over his pension for ve 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 while
van Dyck lived.[6][10]
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 King Charles himself, as well as about thirty of the Queen, nine of Earl of Strafford and
multiple ones of other courtiers.[11] 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 Emperor 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 he seems at rst glance nature's gentleman rather than England's King".[12] 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.[10]

The King in Council by letters

patent granted Van Dyck
denizenship in 1638, and he married
Mary, the daughter of Patrick
Ruthven, who, although the title was
forfeited, styled himself Lord
Ruthven.[13] She was 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

Charles I at the Hunt, c. 1635,

Louvre

England.[6] He had spent most of

1634 in Antwerp, returning the
following year, and in 164041, as
the Civil War loomed, spent several
months in Flanders and France. In
1640 he accompanied prince John
Casimir of Poland after he was freed

Christ carrying the Cross

from French imprisonment.[14]

Portraits and other works

Samson and Delilah, c. 1630, a

strenuous history painting in the
manner of Rubens; the use of
saturated colours reveals van Dyck's
study of Titian

With the partial exception of Holbein, van Dyck and his exact contemporary
Diego Velzquez were the rst 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).
A sketch for one wall remains, but by 1638 Charles was too short of money to proceed.[6] This was a problem
Velzquez did not have, but equally van Dyck's daily life was not encumbered by trivial court duties as Velzquez'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.[15]
A list of history paintings produced by van Dyck in England survives, compiled by Van Dyck's biographer Bellori,
based on information from Sir Kenelm Digby. None of these works appear to remain, except the Eros and Psyche
done for the King (below).[6] But many other works, rather more religious than mythological, do survive, and
though they are very ne, they do not reach the heights of Velzquez'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 attered more than Velzquez's; when Sophia,
later Electoress of Hanover, rst met Queen Henrietta Maria, in exile in
Holland in 1641, she wrote: "Van Dyck's handsome portraits had given me
so ne an idea of the beauty of all English ladies, that I was surprised to nd
that the Queen, who looked so ne 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 traditionof
painters such as William Dobson,
Robert Walker and Isaac 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
The Cheeke Sisters, a late double
brought Face-Painting to us; ever
Henrietta Maria and the dwarf, Sir
portrait
since which time ... England has
Jeffrey Hudson, 1633
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."[10]
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 nished 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.[16]

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 gure, 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".[17]
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.[18] 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 fty-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

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.[18]
The Iconography was highly inuential 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".[10] 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 the period, Rembrandt, and had little inuence until the 19th
century, when it had a great inuence on artists such as Whistler in the last
major phase of portrait etching.[17] 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.[19]

Pieter Brueghel the Younger from the

Iconography; etching by van Dyck

Studio
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.[10] In his last years these studio collaborations accounted for some decline in the quality of work.[20] 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 renement 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] Adriaen Hanneman
(160471) returned to his native Hague in 1638 to become the leading portraitist there.[21] Van Dyck's enormous
inuence on 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 signicance.[6]

Inuences in other elds

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 rst in America in the 19th
century) named a vandyke or Van dyke beard (which is the anglicized version of his name).
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 outt.
The oil paint pigment van Dyck brown is named after him, and Van dyke brown is an early photographic
printing process using the same colour.

Collections
The British Royal Collection, which still contains many of his
paintings of the royal family and others, has a total of twenty-six
paintings.[22] The National Gallery, London (fourteen works), The
Museo del Prado (Spain) (twenty-ve works), The Louvre in Paris
(eighteen works), The Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the National
Gallery of Art in Washington DC and the Frick Collection have
examples of his portrait style. Wilton House still holds the works he
did for one of his main patrons, the Earl of Pembroke, including his
largest work, a huge family group portrait with ten main gures.
Tate Britain held the exhibition Van Dyck & Britain in 2009.[23]
From March 2 until June 5, 2016, The Frick Collection in New York
has the exhibition "Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture", the rst

This triple portrait of King Charles I was sent

to Rome for Bernini to model a bust on

major survey of the artist's work in the United States in over two decades.[24]

Gallery

Daedalus and Icarus c. 1615 - 1625

Christ Crowned with Thorns (c. 1620) in

the Prado

Self Portrait, c. 1621 Alte Pinakothek

Elena Grimaldi, Genoa 1623

Nicholas Lanier, 1628

The Vision of the Blessed Hermann

Joseph c. 1629 - 1630

Rest on the Flight into Egypt (around

1630) Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Marie-Louise de Tassis, Antwerp 1630

Queen Henrietta Maria, London 1632

Charles I with M. de St Antoine (1633)

Katherine, Countess of Chestereld, and James Stuart, Duke of Richmond, c.

Lucy, Countess of Huntingdon, c. 1636 - 1637
40, oil on canvas, The Detroit Institute
of Arts

Equestrian Portrait of Charles I, c.1637- Cupid and Psyche, 1638

8

Portrait of Mary Hill, Lady Killigrew,

Self Portrait at the Rubenshuis in

Antwerp

George Digby, 2nd Earl of Bristol, ca.

16389

See also
Antwerp school
List of Flemish painters
Lost artworks
Henry Stone (161653), English portrait painter and copyist of van Dyck's works.
Portrait of Olivia Boteler Porter

Notes
1. Originally "van Dijck", with the "IJ" digraph, in Dutch.
Anthony is the English for the Dutch Anthonis or
Antoon, though Anthonie, Antonio or Anthonio was
also used; in French he is often Antoine, in Italian
Anthonio or Antonio. In English a capitalised "Van" in
Van Dyck was more usual until recent decades (used by
Waterhouse for example), and Dyke was often used
during his lifetime and later
2. Brown, p. 15.
3. Vlieghe, Hans. Flemish Art and Architecture, 1585
1700 (https://books.google.com/books?id=AS_NXFoY0
M4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_
r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false), Yale University
Press, 2004, p. 124. ISBN 0-300-10469-3
4. Martin, Gregory. The Flemish School, 1600-1900,
National Gallery Catalogues, p. 26, 1970, National
Gallery, London, ISBN 0-901791-02-4
5. Brown, p. 17.
6. Ellis Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 1530-1790, 4th
Edn, 1978, pp. 70-77, Penguin Books (now Yale
History of Art series)
7. Martin, op and page cit.
8. Brown, page 19.
9. Levey, Michael, Painting at Court, Weidenfeld and
Nicholson, London, 1971, pp. 124-5
10. Cust 1899.
11. Gaunt, William, English Court Painting
12. Levey p. 128
13. Cokayne, G. E., et al, The Complete Peerage, vol.iv,
London, 1916, p. 385n
14. "Portret krlewicza". Treasures... (in Polish). Retrieved
29 August 2008.
15. Levey, op cit p. 136
16. Royalton-Kisch, Martin. The Light of Nature,
Landscape Drawings and Watercolours by Van Dyck
and his Contemporaries, British Museum Press, 1999,
ISBN 0-7141-2621-7
17. Arthur M. Hind, A History of Engraving and Etching (h
ttps://books.google.com/books?id=bxFb8nN_wUQC&p
rintsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=
0#v=onepage&q&f=false), p. 165, Houghton Mifin
Co. 1923 (in USA), reprinted Dover Publications, 1963
ISBN 0-486-20954-7
18. Becker, D. P., in KL Spangeberg (ed), Six Centuries of
Master Prints, Cincinnati Art Museum, 1993, no. 72,
ISBN 0-931537-15-0

ISBN 0-931537-15-0
19. Mayor, Alpheus Hyatt. Prints and People, Metropolitan
Museum of Art. Princeton, 1971, no. 433-35, ISBN 0691-00326-2
20. Brown, pp. 84-6.
21. Rudi Ekkart and Quentin Buvelot (eds), Dutch
Portraits, The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals,
Mauritshuis/National Gallery/Waanders Publishers,
Zwolle, p. 138 QB, 2007, ISBN 978-1-85709-362-9
22. Royal Collection (http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/col
lection-search/van%20Dyck?f%5B0%5D=sort_creato
r%3Asir%20anthony%20van%20dyck%20%281599-16
41%29%20%28artist%29) Paintings by Van Dyck
23. Karen Hearn (ed.), Van Dyck & Britain (http://www.tat
e.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/vandyck/), Tate Publishing,
2009. ISBN 978-1-85437-795-1.
24. Frick page (http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/van_dyck)

References
Brown, Christopher: Van Dyck 1599-1641. Royal Academy Publications, 1999. ISBN 0-900946-66-0
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Van Dyck, Sir Anthony". Encyclopdia Britannica 27 (11th ed.).
Cambridge University Press.
Cust, Lionel Henry (1899). "Van Dyck, Anthony". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography 58.
London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Williamson, George Charles (1909). "Antoon Van Dyck". In Herbermann, Charles. Catholic Encyclopedia
5. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Wood, Jeremy. "Dyck, Sir Anthony Van (15991641)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online
ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28081. (Subscription or UK public library membership (http://
www.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/freeodnb/libraries/) required.)

External links
579 Paintings by Anthony van Dyck (http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/your
Wikimedia Commons has
paintings/artists/anthony-van-dyck-11005) at the Art UK site
media related to Anthony
Anthony van Dyck Biography, Style and Artworks (http://www.artbl
van Dyck.
e.com/artists/anthony_van_dyck)
The National Portrait Gallery: Van Dyck: A masterpiece for everyone (http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/arti
sts/anthony-van-dyck)
The National Gallery: Van Dyck (http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/van-dyck/home.php)
Sir Anthony Van Dyck (http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/404429) by Peter Paul Rubens at the
Royal Collection.
Vermeer and The Delft School (http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324col
l10/id/65202/rec/17), a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has
material on Anthony van Dyck
Court ofces
Precededby

Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King

1641

Succeededby
Sir Peter Lely

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anthony_van_Dyck&oldid=723023006"

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