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Anthony van Dyck

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Artists

   Sir Anthony van Dyck (many variant spellings See Van Dyke for other
   uses of all spellings), ( 22 March 1599 – 9 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 a master of etching.
   Self Portrait With a Sunflower showing the gold collar and medal
   Charles I gave him in 1633. The sunflower represents the king, or royal
   patronage.
   Self Portrait With a Sunflower showing the gold collar and medal
   Charles I gave him in 1633. The sunflower represents the king, or royal
   patronage.

Life and work

   Self-portrait, 1613-14.
   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. 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 painter's
   Guild of St Luke as a free master by February 1618. 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'. 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. 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.. 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.

Italy

   In 1620, at the instigation of the Earl of Arundel, van Dyck went to
   England for the first time where he worked for King James I, receiving
   £100. It was in London that he first 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.
   Genoan hauteur from the Lomelli family, 1623
   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."

   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, 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. 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
   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, and a religious
   work for the Queen. In April 1632, 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. 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.
   Charles I, ca. 1635 Louvre - see text
   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. 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 sovereignity, 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"

   Van Dyck became a "denizen", effectively a citizen, in 1638 and married
   the daughter of Lord Ruthven in 1639-40; this may have been instigated
   by the King in an attempt to keep him in England. He had spent most of
   1634 in Antwerp, returning the following year, and in 1640-41, as the
   English 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. 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.

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.
   Samson and Delilah, ca. 1630. A strenuous history painting in the
   manner of Rubens; the saturated use of colour 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
   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. 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.

   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. 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..." 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.

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

   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. 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 the
   last major phase of portrait etching.

Studio

   This triple portrait of Charles I was sent to Rome for Bernini to model
   a bust on
   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". He probably only sketched the outlines and painted the
   heads and hands of many of his later portraits. In his last years these
   studio collaborations accounted for some decline in the quality of
   work. 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 Flemish; he probably preferred to use trained
   Flemings, as no English equivalent training yet existed. His 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.

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).
     * 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 , 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) and the Frick Collection have splendid
   examples of all phases of his portrait style.

Gallery

   "Self Portrait", ca. 1621 Alte Pinakothek

   Elena Grimaldi, Genoa 1623

   Marie-Louise de Tassis, Antwerp 1630

   Queen Henrietta Maria, London 1632

   Charles I with M. de St Antoine (1633)

   James Stuart, Duke of Richmond, ca. 1637

   Amor and Psyche, 1638

   George Digby, 2nd Earl of Bristol, ca. 1638–9

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