22 March 1599 – 9 December 1641) was a Flemish Baroque artist, who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Spanish Netherlands and Italy.

The seventh child of Frans van Dyck, a wealthy silk merchant in Antwerp, Anthony painted from an early age. He was successful as an independent painter in his late teens and became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke of Antwerp on 18 October 1617. By this time, he was working in the studio of the leading northern painter of the day, Peter Paul Rubens, who became a major influence on his work.

Van Dyck worked in London for some months in 1621, then returned to Flanders for a brief time, before travelling to Italy, where he stayed until 1627, mostly in Genoa. In the late 1620s he completed his greatly admired Iconography series of portrait etchings of mainly other artists and other famous contemporaries. He spent five years in Flanders after his return from Italy, and from 1630 was court painter for the Archduchess Isabella, Habsburg Governor of Flanders. At the request of Charles I he returned in 1632 to London as the main court painter.

With the exception of Holbein, van Dyck and his contemporary Diego Velázquez were the first painters of pre-eminent talent to work mainly as court portraitists, revolutionising the genre. Van Dyck is best known for his portraits of the aristocracy, most notably Charles I, and his family and associates. He was the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for over 150 years. He also painted mythological, allegorical and biblical subjects, including altarpieces, displayed outstanding facility as a draughtsman, and was an important innovator in watercolour and etching.

His influence extends into the modern period. The Van Dyke beard is named after him. During his lifetime, Charles I granted him a knighthood, and he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, an indication of his standing at the time of his death.

Life and work

thumb|left|Self-portrait ()

Family and early life

Anthony van Dyck was born in Antwerp on 22 March 1599 as the seventh of 12 children of his parents. He was baptised the next day in the (now the Antwerp Cathedral). His father was Francoïs "Frans" van Dijck, He had later become a successful merchant in silk and small writing articles. He had bought the house where Anthony was born, a property known as ('The Bear Dance'), situated on Antwerp's Grote Markt (main square) in 1579. On Anthony's mother's family there were also a several artists who were Guild members. He was admitted to the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a free master on Saint Luke's day, 18 October 1617.

thumb|260px|The Lomellini family (1625–27)

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.

Certainly, the dominance of Rubens in Antwerp, a relatively small and declining city, could explain why, despite periodic returns to the city, van Dyck spent most of his career abroad. Unlike van Dyck, Rubens worked for most of the courts of Europe, but avoided exclusive attachment to any of them.

Italy

In 1620, at the instigation of George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham, van Dyck went to England for the first time where he worked for King James I of England, receiving £100.

Returned to Flanders after about four months, van Dyke then left in late 1621 for Italy, where he remained for six years. There he studied the Italian masters while starting a successful career as a portraitist. He was already presenting himself as a figure of consequence, annoying the rather bohemian colony of Northern artists in Rome, as Giovan Pietro Bellori recounts, 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 wore, as well as silks, a hat with feathers and brooches, gold chains across his chest, and was accompanied by servants."

thumb|225px|[[Peter Paul Rubens – Anthony van Dyck (1627–28)]]

While mostly based in Genoa, he also travelled extensively to other cities, and stayed for some time in Palermo, in Sicily, where he was quarantined during the 1624 plague, one of the worst in the island's history. There he produced an important series of paintings of the city's plague saint Saint Rosalia. His depictions of a young woman with flowing blonde hair wearing a Franciscan cowl and reaching down toward the imperilled city of Palermo, became the standard iconography of the saint from then onward and was extremely influential for Italian Baroque painters, from Luca Giordano to Pietro Novelli. Versions include those in Madrid, Houston, London, New York and Palermo, as well as Saint Rosalia Interceding for the City of Palermo in Puerto Rico, and Coronation of Saint Rosalia in Vienna. Van Dyck's series of St. Rosalia paintings have been studied by Gauvin Alexander Bailey and Xavier F. Salomon, both of whom curated or co-curated exhibitions devoted to the theme of Italian art and the plague. In 2020, the New York Times published an article about the Metropolitan Museum of Art's painting of Saint Rosalia by Van Dyck in the context of the COVID-19 virus.

For the Genoese aristocracy, at that time enjoying a final flush of prosperity, van Dyke developed a full-length portrait style, drawing on Paolo Veronese and Titian as well as Rubens' style from the latter's own period in Genoa, where extremely tall but graceful figures look down on the viewer with great hauteur. In 1627, van Dyke went back to Antwerp where he remained for five years, painting portraits that were more affable in tone while still making is Flemish patrons look as stylish as possible. A life-size group portrait of twenty-four City Councillors of Brussels which he painted for the council-chamber was destroyed in 1695. Evidently van Dyke was very charming to his patrons, and, like Rubens, well able to mix in aristocratic and court circles, a fact that added to his skill in obtaining 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.

London and death

thumb|220px|[[Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart (), exemplifies the more intimate, but still elegant style he developed in England]]

King Charles I was the most passionate collector of art among the Stuart kings and saw painting as a way of promoting his elevated view of the monarchy. In 1628, Charles bought the fabulous collection that the Duke of Mantua was forced to sell, and from his accession to the throne in 1625 made efforts 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 Orazio's daughter, Artemisia, and some of his sons. Charles made a special point of targeting Rubens, who eventually came in 1630 on a diplomatic mission, which included painting, and who later sent Charles further paintings from Antwerp. Rubens 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. Moreover, Charles was very short, less than tall, and presented challenges to any portrait artist.

Van Dyck remained in touch with the English court and helped King Charles's agents in their search for pictures. He sent some of his own works, including a self-portrait (1623) with Endymion Porter, one of Charles's agents, his Rinaldo and Armida (1629), and a religious picture for Queen Henrietta Maria. He had also painted Charles's sister, Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, at The Hague in 1632. In April of that year, van Dyck returned to London and was immediately taken under the wing of the court, being knighted in July and at the same time being granted a pension of £200 a year, the grant describing him as principalle Paynter in ordinary to their majesties.

left|thumb|Charles I and Henrietta Maria with their two eldest children, Prince Charles and Princess Mary (April–August 1632)

In addition, van Dyke was well paid for his paintings, or at least in theory, as King Charles did not actually hand over the pension for five years and reduced the price of many paintings. A house was provided on the River Thames at Blackfriars, then just outside the City of London, thus avoiding for van Dyke any difficulty with the monopoly of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers. A suite of rooms in Eltham Palace, no longer used by the royal family, was also put at his disposal as a country retreat. These residences were managed by his mistress Margaret Lemon.

His Blackfriars studio was frequently visited by the King and Queen (later a special causeway was built to ease their access), who hardly ever sat for another painter as long as van Dyck lived. He painted many of the court, and also himself and his mistress, Margaret Lemon. 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, were to take the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War that broke out soon after the painter's death.

thumb|Portrait of van Dyck's wife Mary Ruthven (), [[Museo del Prado]]

The King in Council by letters patent granted van Dyck denizenship in 1638. On 27 February 1640 he married Mary Ruthven, with whom he had one daughter. Mary was the daughter of Patrick Ruthven, who, although the title was forfeited, styled himself Lord Ruthven. 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 van Dyke in England.

thumb|Portrait of [[Mary, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange|Mary, daughter of Charles I with her husband the Prince of Orange (1641), Rijksmuseum]]

A letter dated 13 August 1641, from Lady Roxburghe in England to a correspondent in The Hague, reported that van Dyck was recuperating from a long illness. In November, van Dyck's condition worsened, and he returned to England from Paris, where he had gone to paint Cardinal Richelieu.

Portraits and other works

In the 17th century, demand for portraits was stronger than for other types of work. Van Dyck tried to persuade Charles to commission large-scale series on the history of the Order of the Garter for the Banqueting House, Whitehall, for which Rubens had earlier completed the large ceiling paintings (sending them from Antwerp). A sketch for one wall remains, but by 1638 Charles was too short of money to proceed.

A list of history paintings produced by van Dyck in England survives. It was 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.<

Printmaking

thumb|210px|left|Etching of [[Pieter Brueghel the Younger from the Iconography]]

Probably during his period in Antwerp after his return from Italy, van Dyck began his Iconographie, which became a very large series of prints with half-length portraits of eminent contemporaries. He produced drawings, and for eighteen of the portraits he himself etched the heads and 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".

He left most of the printmaking to specialists, who engraved after his drawings. His etched plates appear not to have been published 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. 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.

Studio

thumb|Portrait of [[Adriaen Brouwer]]

Van Dyck's success led him to maintain a large workshop in London, which became "virtually a production line for portraits". According to a visitor he usually only made a drawing on paper, which was then enlarged onto canvas by an assistant; he then painted the head himself. He often used blue paper for these preparatory studies. The costume in which the client wished to be painted was left at the studio and often with the unfinished canvas sent out to artists specialised in rendering such clothing. 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 Dutch or Flemish. He probably preferred to use trained Flemish artists, as no equivalent English training existed in this period.

Flemish painter Pieter Thijs studied in van Dyck's workshop as one of van Dyck's last pupils. He became a very successful portrait and history painter in his native Antwerp.

270px|thumb|[[Charles I in Three Positions (1635–36), Royal Collection. A triple portrait of Charles I, was sent to Rome for Bernini to model a bust on.]]

Legacy

Much later, the styles worn by his models provided the names of the Van Dyke beard for the sharply pointed and trimmed goatees popular for men in his day, and the van Dyke collar, "a wide collar across the shoulders edged copiously with lace". During the reign of George III, a generic "Cavalier" fancy-dress costume called a Van Dyke was popular. Gainsborough's The Blue Boy is wearing such a Van Dyke outfit. In 1774 Derby porcelain advertised a figure, after a portrait by Johann Zoffany, of "the King in a Vandyck dress".

A confusing number of different pigments used in painting have been called "Vandyke brown" (mostly in English-language sources). Some predate van Dyck, and it is not clear that he used any of them. Van Dyke brown is an early photographic printing process using such a colour.

When van Dyck was knighted in 1632, he anglicised his name to Vandyke. The heraldic blazon of his coat of arms is Quarters 1 & 4. Azure six roundels 3, 2 and 1 Or and for augmentation on a chief Gules a lion passant gardant Or. 2 & 3. Sable a saltire Or. Over all an inescutcheon Or thereon a bend sinister Azure. The coat of arms is crested with a greyhound's head.

Collections

thumb|322px|Lamentation of Christ (1635), [[Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp]]

The British Royal Collection, which still contains many of his paintings, has a total of twenty-six paintings. The National Gallery, London (fourteen works), The (Spain) (twenty-five Works, such as: Self-portrait with Endymion Porter, The Metal Serpent, Christ Crowned with Thorns, The taking of Christ, Portrait of Mary Ruthven, the painter's Wife), The Louvre in Paris (eighteen works), the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 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 figures. Petworth House also contains numerous works, many executed for the Percy family.

Spanish museums own a rich presence of this artist in addition to the Prado's ensemble. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum preserves the Portrait of Jacques Le Roy, property of The Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection but also on display at the Museum there's a Crucified Christ, and the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum houses a great Lamentation before the dead Christ. In 2008, Patrimonio Nacional of Spain recovered a Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and returned it to El Escorial, two centuries after its removal and, subsequently, The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando has revealed as its own a long-stored painting, added to another, The Virgin with the Child with the repentant sinners, in addition the institution has an original sketch. In addition, in December 2017, a Virgin with Child, which is kept in the Cerralbo Museum and was previously considered the work of Mateo Cerezo, was revealed as the painter's original after an exhaustive study and restoration project. Finally, the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia owns an Equestrian Portrait of Don Francisco de Moncada.

Tate Britain held the exhibition Van Dyck & Britain in 2009. In 2016 the Frick Collection in New York had an exhibition "Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture", the first major survey of the artist's work in the United States in over two decades.

The estate of the Earl Spencer at Althorp houses a small collection of van Dycks including War and Peace (Portrait of Sir George Digby, 2nd Earl of Bristol, English Royalist politician with William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford), which is the most valuable painting in the collection and the favourite of the earl.

<gallery heights="200" mode="packed" caption="Selection of works in chronological order">

File:Anthonis van Dyck 004.jpg|Christ Crowned with Thorns (), Prado

File:Luigia Cattaneo-Gentile mg 0061.jpg|Luigia Cattaneo-Gentile (), Genoa

File:Anthonis van Dyck 016.jpg|Elena Grimaldi (1623), Genoa

File:Anton Van Dyck - Anton Giulio Brignole-Sale on horseback - Google Art Project.jpg|Anton Giulio Brignole-Sale (), Genoa

File:Anton van Dyck - Nicolas Lanier - Google Art Project.jpg|Nicholas Lanier (1628

File:Anton van Dyck - The Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph - Google Art Project.jpg|The Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph (–30)

File:Anthonis van Dyck 048.jpg|Rest on the Flight into Egypt (), Alte Pinakothek

File:Anton van Dyck - Samson and Delilah - Google Art Project.jpg|Samson and Delilah ()

File:Maria de Tassis, by Anthony van Dyck.jpg|Marie-Louise de Tassis (1630), Antwerp

File:Jacques Le Roy - Van Dyck - 1631.jpg|Portrait of Jacques Le Roy (1631), Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

File:Full length portrait painting of Gaston of France, Duke of Orléans in 1634 by Anthony van Dyck (Musée Condé).jpg|Portrait of Gaston, Duke of Orléans (1632/34), Musée Condé

File:Anthony van Dyck - Charles I (1600-49) with M. de St Antoine - Google Art Project.jpg|Charles I with M. de St Antoine (1633)

File:Van Dyck, Sir Anthony - Venetia, Lady Digby, on her Deathbed - Google Art Project.jpg|Venetia Stanley on her Death Bed (1633), Dulwich Picture Gallery

File:Van dyck tomaso 1634 1635.jpg|Equestrian Portrait of Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano (1634)

File:Anthonis van Dyck 044.jpg|Charles I at the Hunt (), Louvre

File:Anthony Van Dyck - Katherine, Countess of Chesterfield, and Lucy, Countess of Huntingdon - Google Art Project.jpg|Katherine, Countess of Chesterfield, and Lucy, Countess of Huntingdon (–40), oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art

File:Anthonis van Dyck - Equestrian Portrait of Charles I - National Gallery, London.jpg|Equestrian Portrait of Charles I (–38)

File:War and Peace Van Dyck.jpg|Portrait of Sir George Digby, 2nd Earl of Bristol, English Royalist politician with William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford ("War and Peace") (1637), Althorp

File:Anthony van Dyck - Princess Mary, Daughter of Charles I - Google Art Project.jpg|Princess Mary, Daughter of Charles I (), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

File:Anthonis van Dyck 001.jpg|Cupid and Psyche (1638)

File:Anthony Van Dyck - Portrait of Mary Hill, Lady Killigrew - Google Art Project.jpg|Portrait of Mary Hill, Lady Killigrew (1638)

File:Anthony van Dyck Rachel de Ruvigny.jpg|Rachel de Ruvigny, Countess of Southampton (), National Gallery of Victoria

File:The Cheeke Sisters by Van Dyck.jpg|The Cheeke Sisters ()

File:Anton Van Dyck - Christ carrying the Cross - Google Art Project.jpg|Christ carrying the Cross

File:Anthony van Dyck - De apostel Mattheus - L'apotre Matthieu - Fonds Generet - Koning Boudewijnstichting - Fondation Roi Baudouin.jpg|The apostle Matthew, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp

File:Landscape with a Gnarled Tree and a Farm MET DT4127.jpg|Landscape with a Gnarled Tree and a Farm, pen and brown ink, Metropolitan Museum of Art

</gallery>

See also

  • List of paintings by Anthony van Dyck

Notes

References

Sources

  • Blake, Robin. Anthony Van Dyck: A Life 1599-1641. London: Constable, 1999.
  • Brown, Christopher: Van Dyck 1599–1641. Royal Academy Publications, 1999.
  • The Oliver Millar Archive; research papers of Oliver Millar, British art historian and a leading authority on Anthony van Dyck
  • The National Portrait Gallery: Van Dyck
  • Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project