Van Dyck

Anthony van Dyck
Head of Young Man
before 1641
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of painter Frans Snyders
and his wife Margareta de Vos
ca. 1621
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Margareta de Vos,
wife of painter Frans Snyders
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Frick Collection, New York

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Anne Killigrew Kirke
ca. 1637
oil on canvas
Huntington Library and Art Museum, San Marino, California

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of sculptor Jacques Dubroeucq
ca. 1627-35
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Charles I, King of England
ca. 1637
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Isabella Brant
(wife of Peter Paul Rubens)
1621
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Susanna Fourment with Daughter
(relatives of Peter Paul Rubens by marriage)
1621
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Abbé Scaglia
1634
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of a Gentleman
ca. 1618
oil on panel
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of scholar Jan Gaspar Gavartius
ca. 1630-40
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anthony van Dyck
Marie Claire de Croÿ, duchesse d’Havre with Son
1634
oil on canvas
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Legion of Honor)

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of an Old Man
1618
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of a Married Couple
ca. 1617-18
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of a Genovese Noblewoman
1622-23
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Marchesa Elena Grimaldi Cattaneo
1623
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) – Supreme portraitist of the Stuart court of Charles I, Van Dyck was born in Antwerp, the seventh child of a rich textile merchant.  A precocious talent, he was apprenticed at 10 to Hendrik van Balen (1575-1632), a painter of elegant small-scale mythological scenes for middle-class collectors, of whose manner little is discernible even in Van Dyck's earliest known works.  He was an independent master before the age of 19.  Drawn into the orbit of Rubens, it was as an assistant in the latter's studio that he came to the notice of England's premier connoisseur, the Earl of Arundel.  At the Earl's instigation Van Dyck came to London in 1620.  He entered the service of James I in 1621, and also painted pictures for the principal collectors at Court, studying in their collections works by Venetian Renaissance painters already influential on him in Antwerp.  Thus the influence of Rubens was diluted by that of Veronese and, above all, Titian, with a corresponding loosening of brushwork, an increased emphasis on the paint surface deployed on canvas rather than panel, and a certain devaluation of spatial and volumetric definition.  In 1621 he received leave to study in Italy, but returned first to Antwerp, then, absconding from the King's service, remained in Italy until 1627; in 1628 he had re-established his studio in Antwerp, and did not return to London until 1632, to the court of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. 

In Italy, Van Dyck, quite lacking Rubens's intellectual and archeological interests, sketched mainly pictures he admired; among these, works by Titian predominate.  He traveled everywhere, cutting an aristocratic figure.  Although his altarpiece for Palermo had an influence on the Neapolitan school, his main impact was in Genoa.  There he executed a brilliant series of aristocratic portraits, which were indebted to Rubens's Genoese portraits of nearly two decades before, but which also developed the full range of Van Duyck's later portrait repertory.   

Back in Antwerp, Van Dyck embarked on a period of intense activity (1628-32) which saw his finest achievements as a painter of large altarpieces and mythological/poetic subjects as well as portraits.  He also became court painter to the Regent of the Netherlands, Archduchess Isabella.  Despite a wealth of commissions and great success, however, Van Dyck responded to solicitations from the English court; in 1632 he began the oeuvre for which he is best known today, and which transformed, and cast a lasting influence over, the British school.  Perhaps a desire to emulate or outshine Rubens had a part in this decision; but it must be said that Van Dyck's removal to London, where he was knighted in 1632, virtually put a stop to his development as a painter of narrative and religious subjects in the greatest tradition of European art, and robbed that tradition of one of its most sensitive exponents.  This is not to deprecate his achievements in England, where his finest royal portraits in particular outdo Titian in the poetic and imaginative conflation of the public and the intimate, and the depiction of social status with the illusion of natural nobility brilliantly combines the imagery of imperial tradition with a lyricism entirely Van Dyck's own.  It is this lyrical gift which transfigures even the most arrogant aristocratic icon into a romantic ideal. 

– extracts from The Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists by Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton (2000)