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FORMED BY
James Abraham Hillhouse, BA. 1749
James Hillhouse, BA. 1773
James Abraham Hillhouse, B.A. 1808
James Hillhouse, BA. 1875
Removed 1942 from the
Manor Souse in Sachem's Wood
GIFT OF
GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR
ANTHONY VAN DYGK
A FURTHER STUDY BY LIONEL GUST
WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN
COLOUR EXECUTED UNDER THE SUPER
VISION OF THE MEDICI SOCIETY

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
NEW YORK AND LONDON

A UACADftMIE ROT ALE DES BEAUX ARTS D'ANFERS

HOMMAGE

LIONEL CUST
{Membre Honoraire}

Juillet 1911.

ILLUSTRATIONS

I. Anthony Van Dyck, as a Boy.
Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.
II. The Holy Family.
Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
III. An Artist with his Wife and Child.
Hermitage, Petersburg.
IV. The Redeemer with the Four Penitent Sinners.
Augsburg.
V. Marchesa Balbi.
Sir G. L. Holford, Dorchester House, London.
VI. The Balbi Children.
Lord Lucas, National Gallery.
VII. The Virgin and Child with St. Catherine of Alexandria.
Duke of Westminster, Grosvenor House, London.

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
VIII. Christ on the Cross.
Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
IX. The Lamentation over Christ.
Museum, Antwerp.
X. Prince Charles Louis of Bavaria.
Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
XL Prince Rupert of Bavaria.
Imperial Gallery, Vienna.
XII. Maria Luigia de Tassis.
Liechtenstein Collection, Vienna.
XIII. Francisco de Moncada, Marques d'Aytona.
Louvre, Paris.
XIV. Rinaldo and Armida.
Duke of Newcastle, Clumber.
XV. Philip, Lord Wharton.
Hermitage, Petersburg.
XVI. Queen Henrietta Maria.
Lady Wantage, Lockinge.

ILLUSTRATIONS
XVII. The Earl and Countess of Derby and Child.
Messrs. Knoedler & Co., London and New York.
XVIII. William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle.
Duke of Portland, Welbeck.
XIX. Arthur Goodwin, M.P.
Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth.
XX. Sir William Killigrew.
Duke of Newcastle, Clumber.
XXI. Mrs. Anne Kirke.
Lord Lucas, National Gallery.
XXII. Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland.
Duke of Devonshire, Devonshire House, London.
XXIII. Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and his Secretary.
Earl Fitzwilliam, Wentworth Woodhouse.
XXIV. William, Prince of Orange, and Princess Mary Stuart.
Ryks Museum, Amsterdam.
XXV. Anthony Van Dyck with a Sunflower.
Duke of Westminster, Grosvenor House, London.
b

ANTHONY VAN DYCK

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
CHAPTER I
TWELVE years have now elapsed since the citizens
of Antwerp watched the stately procession through
their streets of that wonderful cortege c Les Arts
a travers les Ages,' contrived by the artists of Antwerp to
do honour to one of their predecessors, Anthony Van
Dyck. Similar honour had been done previously to Van
Dyck's great master, Rubens, and at a later date a tribute
on a more modified scale was accorded to the illustrious
memory of Jacob Jordaens. The association of thesethree
great painters, as representative of what was greatest in
the art-history of Antwerp, received a further and stronger
acknowledgment at the Brussels International Exhibition
of 1 9 1 o, where, in the section set apart for the illustration
of the Ancient Art of Belgium during the seventeenth
century, the main part of the Exhibition of Paintings con
sisted of the works of Rubens, Van Dyck, and Jordaens,
with a few others. It was thus recognised that the great
ness of these three painters belonged not only to the city
of Antwerp, but to the Belgian nation as a whole. This
recognition has to a great extent been adopted by the
whole world of art-criticism. Rubens had long been ac
cepted as one of the giant figures in the history of the Fine

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Arts, but the prudish ignorance and prejudice which pre
vailed so strongly at certain times during the nineteenth
century impeded for too long a time any proper concep
tion of the true dimensions of his vast genius. Van Dyck,
on the other hand, could offend no drawing-room suscep
tibilities, and his name was a comfortable cloak for num
berless mediocre productions of his school and period.
Jordaens hardly came within the purview of the nineteenth
century at all. It was a harder task to convince the public
mind that Jordaens, like Frans Hals, was a great and true
artist in paint, and that if he painted the somewhat coarse
and exuberant life of his time and his home, he was as
much entitled to do this as the artists of the nineteenth
century were to depict the elegant inanities and affecta
tions of their own surroundings.
The tercentenary of the birth of Anthony Van Dyck
at Antwerp in 1599 was the signal for an extensive out
put of books and essays dealing with the painter and his
works. It may well be questioned whether the time has
yet arrived for a new study of Van Dyck, or whether the
subject has not already been treated with somewhat be
wildering exhaustiveness. When, however, such master
minds in the history of Art as Max Rooses, Wilhelm Bode,
Gustav Griick, to mention only a few of those who have
made a special study of Van Dyck, have contributed so
much new material to this particular chapter of history,
there may be some excuse for reviewing the ground which
was covered some ten years ago by the present writer's
book on Van Dyck. The course of historical research so

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
patiently pursued by so many devoted students is always
bringing to light new evidence, documentary or pictorial,
which throws light on disputed points, corrects errors,
and supplies omissions.
Taken as a whole, modern research has added little
to the main facts of Van Dyck's life as already presented
to the world. His life and career, so prolific and yet so
prematurely ended, divides itself into four distinct periods
— the painter's early life and artistic education at Antwerp,
his visit to Italy and residence at Genoa, his return to Ant
werp, and finally, his removal to London as court-painter
to Charles I. Each of these periods can be sharply defined,
not only by actual date, but by a characteristic difference
of style, according to the demand and environment of
each period in the artist's career. This is quite peculiar
to Van Dyck, and not to be paralleled in the case of any
of his great contemporaries. Rubens was always Rubens
in his person and in his art, the Rubens of the Palais du
Luxembourg is the same man as the Rubens of Antwerp
or the Munich Gallery. Velazquez in Italy is the same
cold, emotionless Spaniard as Velazquez of Madrid. Rem
brandt passes through the sunshine of fashion to a tragic
and gloomy neglect, but the Rembrandt who smiles at
Leyden is the same Rembrandt who is found in moody
and neglected gloom at Amsterdam. The Van Dyck,
however, of the Genoese Palaces is a difFerent man from
the Van Dyck of the Munich or Dresden Gallery, and
both these Van Dycks are different men from the Van
Dyck of Windsor Castle. The artist is the same, but the
3

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
man himself is different ; and he died at the age of forty-
one ! At that age Rubens had not painted the Marie de
Medicis series for the Luxembourg Palace, Velazquez had
not painted the Meninas or the Hilanderas, and, in the
case of Rembrandt, the Staalmeester was still to come.
Frans Hals had already reached the age of thirty-four at
the earliest date known to exist on one of his paintings, at
which age Van Dyck had reached the fourth period of his
career, and was already installed as court-painter in Eng
land. The only parallel to such a career is in the life and
work of Raffaello Sanzio, who died at the age of thirty-
seven. Great as was Raffaello's achievement, his output
was small in comparison to that which can safely be attri
buted to Van Dyck. Success so immediate and complete
argues a perfect readiness of the soil to produce the artistic
growth of flower and fruit. Home surroundings, national
encouragement, personal affection and sympathy, must all
blend together in one harmonious whole to bring forth a
Van Dyck. Rubens would probably have been great in
whatever circumstances he had been born and bred, but
Van Dyck might have been but second-rate had it not
been for the inspiring influence of Rubens and Titian on
his adolescent skill.
Anthony Van Dyck was born in affluence, and never,
like so many famous artists, exposed to privation or the
pinch of poverty. His father, Frans Van Dyck, was a
prosperous mercer or silk, linen, and wool merchant at
Antwerp, as his father Antoon Van Dyck had been before
him. At the time of the painter's birth in 1599 tne busi-

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
ness was carried on in partnership by Frans Van Dyck, his
mother, Cornelia Pruystincx by birth, and his brother-in-
law, Sebastian de Smit. Frans Van Dyck was twice mar
ried, and by his second wife, Maria Cuypers (or Cupers),
he had twelve children, the last of whom was the cause of
the mother's death in 1607.
Antoon, or Anthony Van Dyck, so-called after his
grandfather, was the seventh child and second son of
Frans Van Dyck and Maria Cuypers, the family consisting
of three sons and nine daughters. Of the sons, the eldest,
Frans, succeeded to the family business, the youngest,
Theodorus, became a priest. Anthony was born on
March 22, 1599, in a house, bearing the sign of ' der
Berendans,' just off the Grootmarkt and opposite to the
Hoogstraat, which had been purchased by his grand
father in 1579. The next day Anthony was baptized in
the great Cathedral close by. Here Frans Van Dyck held
a post as director of the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament in
the Cathedral. The devotion of the family to the service
of the Church is evident from the fact, that not only did
the youngest son become a priest, but one daughter,
Anna, became a nun of the Facontine Convent, and three
other daughters, Susanna, Cornelia and Isabella, became
bdguines. It is clear, moreover, that throughout the vary
ing circumstances of his life, Anthony Van Dyck was
profoundly religious and susceptible to the authority and
teaching of the Church, especially of the Jesuit order.
It is important in studying the history of the Fine
Arts at Antwerp at this period to discover the influential 5

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
part played by the Jesuits. Since the death of its founder,
Ignatius Loyola, in 1 5 56, the Society of Jesus had grown
to maturity and was in full vigour at the time of the birth
of Van Dyck. Under Moretus, the famous printer and
founder of the Plantin Press at Antwerp, religious works
of a propagandist character, replete with allegorical and
emblematical illustrations, were issued and circulated
about the whole civilised world. The art of Rubens was
affected profoundly by the influence of the Jesuits, and in
some instances can only be explained by reference to their
teaching. Rubens himself, though a devout Catholic, does
not reveal a personality deeply affected by the religion
which he was called upon to illustrate in so copious and so
grandiose a manner. The more sensitive, more impulsive,
almost feminine temperament of Van Dyck, was more sus
ceptible to such influence and to the atmosphere of the
Church, and this must be borne in mind when the re
ligious paintings by Van Dyck are a subject for discussion.
There was nothing in Van Dyck's family to divert the
boy specially to the study of painting. The family appear
to have been well-to-do, prosperous merchants in com
fortable circumstances. The mother seems to have
enjoyed a reputation for artistic work, and may have
transmitted some such gifts to her second son, although she
died when the boy was of too tender an age to have derived
much benefit from her example. The profession of an
artist, however, whether painter, sculptor, architect, en
graver or jeweller, was as well recognised in bourgeois
circles at Antwerp as that of the notary, the merchant or
6

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
the priest. Environment in each case probably played a
large part. The family of Van Dyck seems to have been
on the most friendly and neighbourly terms with some
families most of whose sons became painters, particularly
those of De Wael, Brueghel and Snellinck, all related to
each other by marriage with the family of the well-known
engraver and publisher, Gerard de Jode. Jan Snellinck,
himself a leading painter and picture dealer at Antwerp,
took as his second wife, Paulina Cuypers, who was pro
bably a relation of Van Dyck's mother. Rubens himself
had hardly begun l like a colossus to bestride the world '
at the time of Van Dyck's birth, and was actually absent
on his Wander jahre for most of the first decade of Van
Dyck's life. There was, however, a flourishing school of
painting at Antwerp, which had been profoundly affected
by Italian influence ; this, however, was fortunately on
the wane. One branch of this school was represented by
Octavio van Veen, or Otto Venius, from whom proceeded
Rubens ; another branch, which confined itself princi
pally to small paintings with minutely executed figures,
was represented by Hendrik van Balen. A third, of coarser
style and more typically Flemish, the school of Adam van
Noordt, was represented by Jordaens. Yet another
branch, deriving itself from the painter Marten de Vos,
reached its eminence in the painter-brothers, Cornells and
Pauwel de Vos. It is not surprising that the parents of
Anthony Van Dyck should have selected Van Balen as
a teacher for their precocious son. Van Balen, who was
a great personal friend of Rubens, and had been a fellow- 7

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
pupil with him in early days under Van Noordt, was a
correct and rather attractive painter, succeeding best
when his pictures were on a small scale. Snyders had
been his pupil, and in 1609 Van Balen, then Dean of
the Guild of St. Luke, at Antwerp, entered two boy-artists
on the books of the guild, Jooys Soeterman (Justus Sut-
termans), the pupil of the painter Gilliam de Vos, and
Anthony Van Dyck, pupil of Van Balen himself. Van
Balen was also a great friend of the Brueghel family, to
whose work his art was much allied, and the younger Jan
Brueghel, a year or so junior in birth to Van Dyck, was
also a pupil in Van Balen's studio. The progress of Van
Dyck was remarkable even in surroundings which lent
every encouragement to the practice of the Fine Arts, as
part of a liberal education. In 1613, at the age of four
teen, he painted a portrait of an old man, which was
exhibited at the Brussels International Exhibition of 1 9 1 o,
in the Pare du Cinquantenaire Exhibition, and showed an
advanced technical proficiency which helps to explain the
rapid maturity of his genius during the next few years.
Two years later he appears to have left Van Balen's
school, and to have been working on his own account in a
residence of his own in the Lange Minderbroeder Straet
(now Mutsaert Straet) at Antwerp. He even had pupils,
although only a boy of sixteen. The productions of this
nest of schoolboys, as they might be called, seem first to
have been brought to notice by the exhibition of a series
of Heads of the Twelve Apostles, which were exhibited in
a private gallery at Antwerp, and attracted the notice of
8

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Rubens and other artists. Several examples of these
Heads of the Apostles exist. They are evidently care
fully studied from models, the young artists providing
these among themselves, the members of their families, or
the regular professional models used in the school of
Rubens. Van Dyck was undoubtedly the inspiring in
fluence, and the best of these heads can be attributed to
his hand, but it is probable that he was far from being
alone in this youthful atelier.
It can hardly be doubted that the main fact which in
fluenced Van Dyck's boyhood was the return of Rubens
to Antwerp in 1609, his appointment as court-painter to
the regents, Albert and Isabella, his marriage with Isabella
Brant, and finally, the building of his great house and
atelier on the land near the Place de Meir, which he pur
chased in 1 6 1 1 . Commissions poured in on Rubens, and
it was necessary for him to construct his great picture-
manufactory and secure the services of the best working
artists to form his staff. As court-painter Rubens was
free from all the usual regulations imposed on artists by
the Guild of St. Luke. He was not bound to enter his
pupils on their books, and it may be readily imagined that
the teaching of boys would not be a matter of interest to
him. Assistants he wanted, and as he rapidly monopo
lised the whole painting industry of Antwerp, there was
little chance for a young artist to distinguish himself, or
even obtain employment, except as a pupil of Rubens.
He thus collected in his atelier all the rising talent of the
town, Snyders, Jordaens, Erasmus Quellyn, Gaspar de
b 9

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Crayer, Theodor van Thulden, Abraham van Diepen-
beck, Justus van Egmont, to carry out his great designs.
For landscape he secured the services of Jan Wildens,
Lucas van Uden, Jacob Fouquier,as well as his faithful com
panion Deodatus del Mont. He also founded and super
vised a school of engravers, which for technical skill and
picturesque interpretation has remained unrivalled to this
day. It would not have been impossible for him to have
overlooked Anthony Van Dyck, even if the young
painter had to wait his turn for admission, seeing that as
early as 161 1 Rubens himself speaks of young men who
have to remain for a year or more with other painters
while waiting for a vacancy in his studio. He was even
obliged to tell Nicolas Rockox, the influential burgo
master, that he had to refuse more than a hundred, among
them some belonging to his own and his wife's family.
Nicolas Rockox, the burgomaster, seems to have been
acquainted with the young Van Dyck, who painted more
than one portrait of him. It may also be assumed that the
youth had access to the rich gallery of pictures and works
of art formed by another wealthy amateur, Cornells van
der Geest, whose portrait by Van Dyck, now in the
National Gallery, is among the most remarkable and
withal one of the earliest of Van Dyck's paintings. It was
this Van der Geest who gave Rubens the commission for
the great Elevation of the Cross, erected in the Church of
St. Walburga in Antwerp in 1 6 1 1 . Van Dyck can hardly
have failed to be present at the unveiling of this picture,
and in the following year of that even greater work the
io

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Descent from the Cross, painted for the Guild of Archers,
of which Rockox was president, and hung in the great
Cathedral on the wall of the south transept, where it has
remained to this day as one of the accepted monuments
of painting. A susceptible nature like that of Van Dyck,
so ready to appropriate and assimilate suggestions from
outside, must surely have been affected, even at the early
age of twelve or thirteen, by the contemplation of those
great works. From these earliest days no doubt Van Dyck
felt the power and entertained the ambition to become a
rival to the mighty Rubens on his own ground. Mean
while there was nothing for a young artist to do but accept
the situation, seeing that no one at Antwerp, as may be
believed, could have eyes or ears, or even purses, for any
thing but Rubens. There was no need for pioneer work,
even if such had been possible. The air was replete with
formulas, some borrowed from the academical schools of
Italy, some emanating from the creative brain of Rubens
himself. A young student only needed to help himself
by regular work and an intelligent selection from the
copious material for the Fine Arts, which was ready to
his hand. This explains in some way the extraordinary
precocity of Van Dyck, and why at the age of fourteen
or fifteen, at which Rubens himself had been studying the
first rudiments of painting, Van Dyck was already a com
plete artist on his own account. There is no certainty of
the exact date at which Van Dyck became an assistant
(allievo) in the atelier of Rubens. It was probably not
before February 1618, when Van Dyck was admitted to
11

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
the freedom of the Guild of St. Luke, an unprecedented
distinction for his age, followed soon after by his admis
sion, through his father, to the full rights of a citizen of
Antwerp. During the few years that Van Dyck spent under
Rubens his paintings, so far as they can be identified apart
from those of his master, are all in the manner and on the
model of Rubens. Modern critics and experts have striven
to separate from a number of doubtful works those which
can safely be attributed to Van Dyck's own hand. The
occupation is fascinating, if rather futile in some instances,
and requires all the technical knowledge and comparative
experience possessed by such experts as Wilhelm Bode,
Claude Phillips, or Max Rooses. It will be sufficient here
to assert that at this period of his career Van Dyck, like
his fellow-assistants in the atelier of Rubens, had no
artistic existence outside Rubens, except in portraiture.
Rubens, as is well known, maintained a picture-factory in
his great house. He had his own studio, a sacred shrine
to which few were allowed to penetrate, and one or more
large workshops in which his assistants worked, drawing
from the collection of antique marbles or working out the
master's designs in large cartoons, transferring them to
canvas, laying in all that the master felt could be safely
entrusted to their hands before he gave the canvas his final
touches, or in some cases making a direct copy or a skilful
imitation of his style. For each grade of picture manufac
ture Rubens had a fixed scale of payment. His assistants
were carefully selected and ranked according to their skill.
12

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Some, such as Jordaens, and De Crayer, attained eminence
afterwards ; others, such as Van Thulden, Van der
Hoecke, Quellyn, remained nothing but skilful, if second-
rate, repeaters of their master's ideas. Among the workers
in the atelier Anthony Van Dyck was already accorded
pre-eminence for his skill. There is no need to doubt the
oft- told tale, how while Rubens was out one day for his
daily ride by the river, his assistants got access to his
private studio ; there one of them, Van Diepenbeck,
according to tradition, slightly damaged an unfinished
painting. Panic-stricken at the thought of their master's
anger, their only hope lay in the skill of Van Dyck to
repair the damage. The incident was at once remarked
by Rubens, who, however, was quite satisfied with what
Van Dyck had done to the picture.
Some of the earlier paintings by Van Dyck seem to
have been painted before he actually entered the atelier of
Rubens. They illustrate the inexperience of youth when
coping with the formulas of mature genius. During the
two years or so spent under Rubens himself Van Dyck's
style shows a great advance to maturity. It was not only
Rubens himself, but the treasures of art collected by
Rubens,Van der Geest and others, to whose collections Van
Dyck had access, which instilled the greatness of art into
the mind of the young painter. Rubens during his long
stay in Italy, at Venice, Mantua and Genoa, had learnt to
appreciate the greatworks of the Venetian school, and had
shaken off the tyranny of the academical schools at Rome
and at Bologna, which had been sapping the virility of
13

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
northern artists. Rubens brought back with him paint
ings by Titian, Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese, which
opened out to Van Dyck a new world to be explored.
The influence of Titian on Van Dyck is evident before he
went to Italy himself. This is specially evident in his
treatment of the nude. As an assistant to Rubens Van
Dyck had necessarily to deal with the rendering of the
nude body, in which Rubens took a perhaps over-exu
berant interest, and exercised an unrivalled and inimitable
skill. Van Dyck, on the other hand, showed a sensitive
shrinking from the kind of nudity in which his master
revelled. The glowing masses of colour with which
Titian treated his renderings of the nude body were much
more sympathetic to the young Van Dyck, who showed
even at this early age a marked preference for the idealised
sensualism of the Venetian nude over the frank realism
and grossness of the Flemish.
Anthony Van Dyck was, however, no cage-bird.
The feathers were fast growing and gathering strength on
the wing, which were to bear him like a bird into the
empyrean air. No one, not even Rubens himself, could
expect this brilliant, already famous youth, to be con
tented with drawing cartoons for engravers, or tapestry
works, or taking the lion's share in the great commissions
for which Rubens took the credit. The change was soon
to come.

14

CHAPTER II
A CHARMING portrait preserved in the Academy
of Fine Arts at Vienna gives a good representa
tion of Van Dyck in his youth. It is evidently
painted by himself. , The boy, for he seems little more,
looks out over his right shoulder. He has large observant
eyes, a delicately shaped nose and chin, and full, rather
sensual lips, with a touch of raillery in his expression.
Silken auburn hair falls in studied negligence over his ears
and forehead. The same features appear in the portraits
of himself a few years later, only the expression is more
sedate and self-conscious, the hair more elaborately ar
ranged, and his long slender hands, so remarkable for their
elegance, introduced into the portrait. Were the por
traits anonymous, it would be asked who this youthful
genius can be.
Portrait-painting at Antwerp had for long been one
of the most successful and profitable branches of art.
Antwerp portrait-painters had found their way to England
and other countries, there being such a glut of talent in
Antwerp before the Spanish troubles that the city could
afford to give of its best to others. The early traditions
of the Antwerp School still held their ground, and their
somewhat stiff formalism had found reinforced strength 15

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
in the rich court costumes and armour which had been
introduced by the Hapsburg and Burgundian rulers. The
more sober habits of the Netherlander, especially since
the advent of the reformed religion, were antagonistic to
the ruling fashions of display, and were for a time swept
away by the religious wars, which in their time produced
a reaction. Two painters then struck out somewhat new
lines of their own — Rubens and Cornells de Vos. Rubens
was never a portrait- painter in the restricted use of the
name. Great works as some of his portraits are, they are
rather decorative paintings than mere portraits, and the
effect of the whole picture was more of an object to the
painter than the delineation of the sitter's character. Cor
nells de Vos carried on some of the traditions of the old
school, but with surprising success. If it be difficult to
separate the work of Van Dyck from that of Rubens in
history-painting, it seems sometimes as difficult to dis
tinguish between the work of Van Dyck and that of the
older painter, Cornells de Vos. In his earliest portraits
Van Dyck gives evidence of his particular skill in this
branch of art, and of the laborious industry with which
this skill was obtained. The portraits seem to be elabo
rately and carefully constructed, built up and modelled to
the extreme point of academical precision, as in the case
of the famous portrait of Cornells Van der Geest in the
National Gallery. They lack as yet the individuality of
style, the direct assuredness, the strong personal expres
sion of the artist himself, which are so characteristic of
Van Dyck's later work. The subjects appear to be the
1 6

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
prosperous citizens of Antwerp with their wives as they
really were, and not the false aristocracy of a later date.
Children are painted with delightful humour, and one or
two of the family groups of this early date are hardly to be
surpassed. The ladies wear the short, close head-gear,
with the tight-fitting caps, so unbecoming in art, and
the large wheel ruffs, then in vogue. So difficult is it in
many cases to distinguish the style of Van Dyck from his
contemporaries, that one doubts, when the painting is the
salient object of interest, if the portrait be not by Rubens ;
if the veracity and uncompromising directness of the like
ness be the more obvious, if the portrait be not by Cor
nells de Vos; and if a certain robustness and coarse vigour
be shown, if the portrait should not be given to Van
Dyck's contemporary, Jacob Jordaens, whose style as a
portrait-painter was more akin to that of Rubens.
Van Dyck was not long to remain a mere working
assistant in Rubens's studio. Traditional gossip will have
it that Rubens was jealous of the young artist's growing
reputation, and advised him to confine himself to por
traits, and also that Isabella Brant, the first wife of Rubens,
looked with too kindly eyes on the attractive young Van
Dyck. There is no need to credit either rumour, for the
relations between Rubens and Van Dyck seem always to
have been most cordial, and governed by mutual appre
ciation of each other's great excellences. If Isabella
Brant singled out the handsome young painter for special
attention, she was only doing what other great ladies
were charged with doing in after-days, the haughty dames
c 17

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
of Genoa, the sprightly ladies at Whitehall, nay ! even
the queen, Henrietta Maria, herself.
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, seems to have
been the chief agent in the change of life for Anthony Van
Dyck. It appears that the Countess of Arundel visited
Antwerp in June 1620, and sat to Rubens for the group,
now in the Munich Gallery, which shows the countess
sitting with her dog, her dwarf, her servant ; the portrait
of her husband in the background was a subsequent ad
dition. This portrait of the Countess of Arundel is, how
ever, so closely related to that of Anne of Austria, which
was painted by Rubens in Paris a few years later, that it is
difficult to believe that this actual Arundel group could
have been painted at Antwerp as early as 1620. There is no
positive evidence that the Earl of Arundel was in the Nether
lands in 1 6 20, but the countess was taking her sons to Italy
for their education, and stopped at Antwerp on the way.
The earl himself was in England most of the time between
1 6 1 5 and 1630. Arundel was at the time busily engaged
on the formation of his great art collections, which he was
accomplishing through his agents on the Continent,
one of the principal of whom was Sir Dudley Carleton,
Ambassador at the Hague from 1615101625. Arundel,
while collecting pictures and works of art for himself,
was anxious to promote a school of painters in London.
Native talent was at this date quite wanting, such as did
exist being but servile copies of the leading painters im
ported from abroad. The virile influence of Antonio
Moro, and the more courtly style of the younger Pourbus
18

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
and Sanchez Coello, had given place to the fashion for por
traits illustrating the extravagant costumes which had
been introduced into the Netherlands as already stated,
and into England by the prevailing fashion of copying
everything foreign, especially the French. Antwerp had
already supplied painters in this style, such as Paul van
Somer and Blyenberg. Van Somer, however, was dead,
and Arundel had already persuaded Daniel Mytens to
come over from The Hague, not having been successful
with Michiel JanszvanMiereveldt,who seems to have been
looked on as the chief portrait- painter there, and the head
of too flourishing a portrait-manufactory to wish to change
his quarters. The Countess of Arundel no doubt told her husband
of the fame already enjoyed by the young Van Dyck, and
his attractive personality. Negotiations were opened for
his entering the service of King James I. Van Dyck does
not, however, seem to have been easy to persuade. In July
1620 he had not yielded to Arundel's request, for one of
Lady Arundel's suite wrote to tell Arundel that Van
Dyck was still with Rubens, that his works were valued
at very much less than those of his master's, that he was
only twenty-one, with very rich parents, and that it was
difficult to persuade him to leave Antwerp. In Novem
ber, however, Sir Toby Matthew writes from Antwerp to
Sir Dudley Carleton, that Van Dyck had gone to England,
and that the king had given him an annual pension of one
hundred pounds. Matthew seems himself to have looked
upon Van Dyck as a difficult person to deal with. 19

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
The state of the Fine Arts in England during the
early part of the seventeenth century left a great deal to
be desired. The ground was good, and the material at
hand, but there was a great lack of some predominant
style and of natural expression. Architecture, especially
domestic architecture, was very flourishing, and was in
the act of producing Inigo Jones. Some of the minor
arts were in a healthy state, but painting and sculpture,
as decorative work, had not shaken off the baleful influ
ence of the decaying Renaissance. Portrait-painting had
been very prosperous, but had reduced itself to a craft.
A new spirit was, however, in the air, of which Arundel
was the chief exponent. Buckingham sought to rival
Arundel as an art-patron and collector, and in this, as in
his statesmanship, proved himself to be but a magnificent
fraud. James I. was not really a lover of art, and the re
markable qualities shown by both his sons, Henry and
Charles, can hardly have been derived from James or his
Stuart ancestors, except for the French influence, which
may have been brought into Scotland by Mary, Queen of
Scots. The king's idea of a court-painter was probably
confined to that of a sergeant-painter [pic tor serviens),
who had existed as a kind of court official for generations,
called upon to paint the royal barge, or such menial duties,
or to paint and provide, in as many repetitions as might
be required, signboard effigies of the sovereigns and their
family. A painter like Van Dyck, already spoilt by the
caresses of fame, accustomed to the exuberant magnifi
cence of the Rubens school, may well have found himself
20

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
out of place at the Court of St. James. He did not take
long to make up his mind. On February 16, 1 620/1, he
was paid the sum of c one hundred pounds by way of
reward for speciall service by him performed for his
Majestie, without accompt imprest or other charge to be
sett uppon him for the same or for anie part thereof.'
This was a remarkable payment for so young a painter,
who could not have been above three months in the king's
service. It is even more remarkable that no record of this
special service exists ; the only works of Van Dyck which
can have been done in England at this date being the full-
length portraits at Windsor Castle of James I., copied, as
is stated, from a miniature by Hilliard, and of his deceased
son Henry, Prince of Wales, a copy from an earlier por
trait by Paul van Somer. If these were the duties of a
court- painter to King James, and they seem to have been
imposed on and accepted by Daniel Mytens, Van Dyck
may be pardoned for determining to throw up his post in
the royal service, and go on a period of travel or Wander-
jahre on the Continent, as Rubens had done before him.
In this he seems to have been supported by Arundel, who
obtained from the king and the great officers of the House
hold, c a passe for Anthoine Van Dyck, gent, his Matles
servaunt to travaile for 8 months he havinge obtayned his
Matics leaue in that behalf as was sygnifyed by the E. of
Arundell.' This was on February 28, 1 620/1 . Soon after
that date Van Dyck was back at Antwerp.
For the next few months it is uncertain upon what Van
Dyck was engaged. It seems hardly probable that a man
21

ANTHONY VAN DYCK,
who had been, and was in fact still court-painter to a king,
who had returned home with gold in his pocket and a gold
chain round his neck, should be content to resume his
place among hisformer comrades in the atelierot Rubens.
His leave, however, was granted distinctly for purposes of
travel. There is, however, no actual trace of his having
been away from Antwerp during these few months. There
are certain paintings by Van Dyck, which show most
strongly the influence of Titian, and yet clearly belong to
the early period of his life, while working with Rubens.
Among these are the Mocking of Christ, the Betrayal of
Christ, and the St. Martin. Each of those can be traced
to studies after Titian, jotted down by Van Dyck in his
famous Sketch-Book at Chatsworth. It has usually been
assumed, and with more obvious probability, that this
Sketch-Book was not begun by Van Dyck until he had
reached Italy. Rubens had, however, accumulated many
fine works by Titian, Tintoretto, and other Venetian
painters in his house, to which Van Dyck without doubt
had access. Rubens had copied and adapted himself
Titian's painting of the ' Crowning with Thorns.' It
is possible, therefore, that Van Dyck may have devoted
himself to the study of these paintings in Rubens's time,
and made himself thoroughly acquainted with the tech
nique of Titian before he actually went to Italy. This
seems the more possible seeing that Rubens was the actual
owner of Van Dyck's Betrayal of Christ, and the
Mocking of Christ, which were sold after his death in
1 64 1, and purchased for King Philip IV. of Spain, where
22

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
they now are in the Prado Gallery at Madrid. The ver
sions owned by Rubens were repetitions ordered by him
from Van Dyck of paintings executed for the Abbey at
Bruges. The St. Martin at Windsor Castle, which
also came from Spain, is possibly also identical with
one owned by Rubens. It is important also to remember
that a former regent of the Netherlands, Mary of Austria,
Queen of Hungary, sister of Charles V., had been a great
admirer of the paintings by Titian, and had collected
some twenty or more paintings by him, in her palace at
Brussels, or in her summer residences in the Nether
lands. These comprised some important pictures, in
cluding the portraits painted by Titian of the royal
personages assembled at Augsburg in 1548, such as the
famous c Charles V. at the Battle of Muhlberg,' with which
Van Dyck was certainly acquainted, the ' Sisyphus ' and
' Prometheus,' and the ' Noli me Tangere,' a fragment of
which only exists in the Prado at Madrid, the whole
composition being recorded in Van Dyck's Sketch-Book
at Chatsworth. One may therefore be led to assume that
the study of Titian, which this Sketch-Book proves, must
have begun before Van Dyck left for Italy.
This step was no doubt recommended and encouraged
by Rubens. Rubens himself had gone to Italy twenty
years before to study rather than to practise painting.
Going straight to Venice in 1600 he had encountered
the young Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua,who took
the painter into his service, and maintained him in
personal service to himself at Mantua, and on visits to
23

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Florence and Rome. Rubens had also been sent by the
Duke on a mission to Madrid. Finally, Rubens had
followed his master to Genoa, where the news of his
mother's dangerous state of health had given him an ex
cuse for breaking his chains. Van Dyck would naturally
wish to follow in the footsteps of Rubens as far as pos
sible, although it may be doubted if Rubens's own experi
ence of the Gonzaga patronage would have encouraged
him to advise his young friend to seek to secure the same.
Anyhow, Rubens gave Van Dyck his best encouragement,
and one of the best horses in his stables, no small gift, as
Rubens was dependent for health on his daily ride and the
quality of his mounts. An Italian friend of Rubens,
Cavaliere Giovanni Battista Nani, was returning to Italy,
and in his company Anthony Van Dyck started on
October 3, 162 1, reaching Genoa on November 21 fol
lowing. The eight months' leave for travel, granted by
King James I., seems to have been entirely forgotten.
A pretty legend, by no means inconsistent with what
is known of Van Dyck's temperament, has invested a
painting of St. Martin in the church at Saventhem near
Brussels with romantic interest. The tale of Van Dyck's
delay on his journey to Italy for love of the fair maiden of
Saventhem has been disproved by the remorseless evi
dence of facts as to the actual date of acquisition of this
picture by the Church of Saventhem from the Seigneur de
Boisschot, a patron of Van Dyck. This St. Martin, and
the more important version of the same composition at
Windsor Castle, are unmistakably based, so far as the
24

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
central figure is concerned, on Titian's great woodcut of
' Pharaoh intheRed Sea,' details from which are to be found
in the Chatsworth Sketch-Book, and which is very likely
to have been found among the objects of art brought
back by Rubens from Italy. If we may assume that the
notes from Titian were begun by Van Dyck before he
went to Italy, and that he spent some time at Brussels
studying the paintings by Titian in the regent's palaces,
there may be some foundation for a more romantic cause
of his delay in starting on his travels.
There was more than one reason for Van Dyck select
ing Genoa as his first goal in Italy. Genoa was one of
the most important cities in Europe at this date. It was
an independent State, governed by an oligarchy of great
ruling families, chief among which was that of Doria. As a
seaport and mercantile city, Genoa was second only to
Venice, but even more than Venice it was the chief port
or clearing-house of the Mediterranean Sea, and the prin
cipal gate of access between Spain and the German pro
vinces, including the Netherlands, which formed the
great Empire of the Hapsburgs. Unlike Venice, however,
Genoa had produced no native school of artists, and was
dependent on importations from outside to supply the
demands for such a luxury. The short sojourn of Rubens
at Genoa in 1608 seems to have opened out to Flemish
artists an unoccupied field for activity. Through this Van
Dyck found a personal reason for going straight to Genoa.
Among the Flemish artists already settled or beginning to
form a circle there, were the brothers Cornells and Lucas
d 25

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
de Wael, in whose house at or near Genoa the new arrival
from Antwerp naturally found a hearty welcome.
The brothers De Wael were a few years senior in age
to Van Dyck. Their parents, Lucas de Wael and Ger
trude de Jode, were friends of Van Dyck's family, and
were portrayed by Van Dyck in one of his finest double
portraits, now at Munich. Through their mother the
De Waels were nephews to Jan, or ' Velvet,' Brueghel,
and to Pieter de Jode, the engraver. Van Dyck painted
the two De Waels in a double portrait, now in the
gallery of the Capitol at Rome, where also is a similar
double portrait of Pieter de Jode and his son, both noted
as engravers. These two companion paintings were both
in the same private collection at Antwerp in 1692. Jan
Brueghel, the younger, Van Dyck's early friend, had pre
ceded, or accompanied him, to Genoa. Two other com
patriots, Jan Roos and Michael of Antwerp, were also
there. Anthony Van Dyck was not among strangers.
In dividing Van Dyck's career into periods, sharply
defined as they came to be, it is necessary to avoid any
idea of a sudden change in style. Van Dyck was ardent,
acquisitive, assimilative in his temperament, but it re
quired time and industry to mould these qualities into
a great style of his own. If it may be assumed that he
came to Italy, already profoundly influenced not only
by the work of Rubens, but also by that of Titian and
Tintoretto, there will be no difficulty in imagining the
young painter as simply continuing his progressive work
at Genoa, only under the influence of a warmer and more
26

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
passionate atmosphere. A certain number of history-
paintings, sacred or mythological, as well as portraits, in
which the combined influence of Rubens and Titian ap
pears infused by the ardour and enthusiasm of youth,
seem to belong to the period of his first stay at Genoa,
a few short months only before the painter started on his
journey to study, rather than to practise, painting at
Venice and at Rome.
In February 1622 Anthony Van Dyck — Signor
Antonio, as he now liked to call himself — left Genoa and
went by sea to Rome. In the Eternal City he was sure
of patronage from Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, who had
spent some years as Papal Legate in Flanders and written
a history of the Netherlands. Van Dyck, however, did
not linger at Rome, but started north in the direction of
Venice. On the way he stopped at Florence and was
greeted by his old friend Justus Suttermans, now court-
painter to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had been
entered as a boy on the lists of the Guild of St. Luke at
Antwerp the same day as Van Dyck. It is interesting to
note the difference in the development of the two painters
who thus started on their careers on the same day.
Suttermans found an early home with the Medici princes,
and what we know of their personality is largely due
to the straightforward skill of their painter. Sutter
mans, however, had little imagination, and remained an
Antwerp painter to the last, partly influenced by his
surroundings, a survivor rather than a pioneer. He has
in consequence remained an unheeded, too little appreci- 27

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
ated figure in art, while his former boy-friend soared into
the empyrean. At Florence also Van Dyck may have
met a man who was to have eventually a profound influ
ence on his life, Sir Kenelm Digby, the Don Quixote of
English nobility. From Florence he passed to Bologna,
and visited the great academical schools of the Carracci
and Guido Reni. Eventually he arrived at Venice.
Whether it was by chance or design, Van Dyck found
resident in a villa near Venice, on the mainland, a former
friend in Alethea, Countess of Arundel. It is very pro
bable that Van Dyck was taken under her patronage,
perhaps under her roof. Although he spent some time
at Venice, he has left no drawings of the place, no por
traits of its great citizens, nothing but art-studies from
paintings by Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese to show
how he occupied his time.
The Countess of Arundel managed to get herself in
volved in an unfortunate political controversy at Venice,
that resulted in the punishment with death of one of the
leading citizens, Foscarini. The countess considered
herself much aggrieved by her treatment, and vindicated
herself by establishing a claim for redress and apology.
Venice was, however, no longer a comfortable place for
her, and she decided to return home. Illness prevented
her from removing at once, and it was just during this
period that Van Dyck was living at Venice. As the
countess was a passionate lover and omnivorous collector
of pictures and works of art, there could be no reason for
discrediting the story that she invited Van Dyck to return
28

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
with her to England, and indeed took him in her train as
far as Turin. If this were the case, the lethargic progress
of a great lady and her suite, encumbered moreover by
waggon-loads of paintings, statuary, and other objects ac
cumulated by the countess on her travels, would have en
abled Van Dyck to visit several places of interest en route.
Mantua he never visited, the city of the Gonzagas, so
intimately connected with the career of Rubens. The
Duke Vincenzo, the patron of Rubens, was no more, and
the glory of the Gonzaga dynasty was fast approaching
its close; his successor, Duke Ferdinando, shunned Man
tua and resided chiefly at Venice, where he must have met
and known Van Dyck, and gave him the heavy gold chain
which the painter so proudly displays in his self-portrait
at Munich. Mantua therefore offered no longer the same
opportunities for patronage. Van Dyck was probably
attached to the service of Lady Arundel, and may have
been warned by Rubens not to depend too much on
the patronage of any proud and wilful master. Across
the Lombard plain the caravan would have proceeded,
probably by Parma and Piacenza, towards Turin. At
Parma Van Dyck could have seen the marvellous fres
coes by Correggio, still fresh in their original beauty.
Something of the suavity of Correggio can sometimes be
detected as blending vwith the influence of Rubens and
Titian in Van Dyck's sacred pictures. It must remain
uncertain if the painter actually accompanied the coun
tess as far as Turin, as he most certainly declined her
invitation to pay a second visit to England. 29

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Another motive may have determined his actions,
may even, indeed, have necessitated a sudden and fleet
ing return to his native city. On December i, 1622,
Frans Van Dyck, the painter's father, died at Antwerp.
From a register of the Dominican convent at Antwerp
it appears that Frans Van Dyck had been nursed and be
friended by the nuns of this convent during the painter's
absence, and that on his deathbed the father had expressed
a wish to his son that he should paint an altarpiece for the
convent chapel. Does this record denote the presence of
Anthony Van Dyck at his father's death-bed ? The jour
ney from Italy to Antwerp was a matter of weeks in those
days, and communication by letter or messenger took
nearly as long. It would seem more probable that the
father, unable to see his brilliant son before he died, left
him this dying request, a request which Van Dyck on his
subsequent return to Antwerp was scrupulous to execute,
as denoted by the inscription on the great altarpiece
Christ on the Cross between St. Dominic and St. Cathe
rine of Siena now in the Museum of Fine Arts at Antwerp.
Rome was now the goal of Van Dyck's ambitions, and
early in 1623 he seems to have been settled there. As a
painter required powerful patronage, he in all probability
enjoyed that of Cardinal Bentivoglio, of whom he has left
that marvellous portrait, now in the Pitti Palace at Flor
ence, one of the great pieces of painting in the world of
art. He is stated to have painted Cardinal Barberini, about
to succeed to the Papacy as Urban VIII., and this portrait
may perhaps be traced in the engraved portrait of the
30

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Pope by Van Dyck's friend and compatriot, Lucas Vors-
terman. Traces of his Roman visit are to be found in his
Sketch-Book, sketches of pictures by Titian, of the famous
antique painting in the Aldobrandini palace, now in the
Vatican, and of the eccentric Sir Robert Shirley, ambas
sador from the Shah of Persia to Europe, who was in Rome
in 1 623, and who with his Circassian wife sat to Van Dyck
for their portraits.
Rome was not, however, a congenial atmosphere for
Van Dyck. The clubs and cliques of artists, native and
foreign, congregated in Rome, were jealous of the patron
age given to Van Dyck, and of his social success. They
criticised his pictures unfavourably, admired in some cases
his colouring as superficially good, but found fault with
his drawing. Evidently the young painter, with his fine
clothes, his gold chain, and his quick temper, made him
self disliked by his fellow-artists at Rome. // pittore
cavalleresco they nicknamed him. Van Dyck, resenting
their attitude, quitted Rome in disgust and returned to
Genoa, where he was sure to receive a more friendly
welcome.

3i

CHAPTER III
SIGNOR ANTONIO was resident at Genoa for the
greater part of the next five years. It is not
certain if he lived in the house of his friend,
Cornells de Wael, on the sea-shore, or if he had a resi
dence of his own. It is possible to trace in certain por
traits the identity of De Wael from his likeness in the
double portrait at the Capitoline Museum. The great
equestrian portrait, shown by Messrs. Agnew at the
Brussels Exhibition of 1910, as well as a full-length
portrait in armour belonging to the Marquess of Linlith
gow, each suggest a friendly portrait of De Wael mas
querading in the dress of the Genoese nobility ; the
likeness may, however, be misleading. Here at Genoa,
at all events, Van Dyck was on congenial soil. Genoa
itself was in rather a perturbed condition, and in a con
stant state of military or naval activity. This had re
tarded the advance of the Fine Arts, so that Van Dyck
found himself absolutely without a rival either in the*
present or the past, and his arrival brought a new de
velopment of painting into Genoa and its territory. He
was now a fully trained and consummate artist, with the
technique of Rubens and Titian at his finger-ends, and
his own incomparable personality to add to the skill as
32

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
a painter. During his stay at Genoa many demands were
made upon Van Dyck for paintings of sacred history,
which were not only dispersed about Italy, but exported
from Genoa to Sicily and Spain, and even to his native
city of Antwerp. In these paintings Van Dyck used
freely the compositions of Rubens and Titian, sometimes
repeating, as in later days at Antwerp, his own com
positions in more mature forms. The popularity of his
religious paintings was due, in all probability, to Van
Dyck's personal sympathy with the religious atmosphere
of the period, the passionate over-emphasised fervour
inculcated by the Jesuits. It is just this note of religious
intensity which is lacking in the great religious composi
tions of Rubens, Titian and Tintoretto. Their great
paintings are exhibitions of magnificent pictorial skill,
splendid outpourings of pictorial rhetoric, but they do
not reach the inner heart of the spectator. Van Dyck,
working on simpler lines, borrows the head of Christ, for
instance, from Titian, converts the 'Tribute Money ' of
Titian into the Tribute Money of Van Dyck in the Pa
lazzo Bianco at Genoa, and uses the same type for the
Man of Sorrows in the same collection. There is a fine
example of these sacred paintings at Buckingham Palace
in Christ healing the Paralytic, another version of which
is at Munich. In the familiar subject of the Crucified
Christ, a subject which Van Dyck made peculiarly his
own, and for which there seems to have been a special de
mand at Rome, Van Dyck did nothing more than borrow
from Rubens, but whereas the Christ of Rubens would be
e 33

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
a glorious decoration for a cathedral, the Christ of Van
Dyck was a painting which, hung in a side-chapel or
private oratory, would receive the tears and passionate de
votion of distressed humanity, who saw in such a painting
the representation of the Divine Man while His image was
in their hearts. So with the Madonna : no painter outside
the Italian School has expressed the root idea of divine
maternity so well as Van Dyck, whether it be as the
Mother with her infant Son or the Mother wailing the
death of her best-beloved on the cross of infamy. Here,
like Raphael, Van Dyck adopted no conventional type,
but, like Raphael, he took his models from human life and
transmuted them into divine significance. In such paint
ings, again,while adopting all the rhetorical and theatrical
formulas of Rubens, Van Dyck added a human touch,
which brings them nearer to the emotional spectator. In
the history of art the religious paintings of Van Dyck must
occupy a secondary place, but in the history of the human
race, especially that of the Roman Church, they have an
importance of their own exceeding that of greater artists.
In remote churches of France, Italy and Spain, copies will
be found of well-known paintings by Van Dyck used as
typical objects of devotion.
With mythological subjects Van Dyck was less suc
cessful. There he could not follow the tremendous ex
amples of Rubens and Titian . On the one hand , he shrank
from that fearless and reckless treatment of the female
nude in which Rubens revelled, and on the other, he could
not enter into that realm of poetic mystery which had been
34

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
breathed into Italy from Hellas, and had not long before
found its most inspired outlet of expression in Giorgione
and the School of Venice. It was not that Van Dyck
shrank from painting the nude when occasion demanded,
but when he does so it is rather in the spirit of 'a gourmet
or dilettante. His early painting of Jupiter and Antiope,
of which several disputed versions exist, has neither the
palpitating realism of Rubens nor the idealised scnsuous-
ness of Titian. Even his early painting of Susanna and
the Elders, done in his Rubens days, has suggested the
idea that the lady was more concerned with the loss of her
clothes than with the danger to her virtue. In portrait-
painting Van Dyck attained for himself at Genoa a fame
which has lasted to the present day, and is not likely to
be dimmed in the future. Van Dyck was destined by
nature to be the painter par excellence of persons who
maybe described in ordinary parlance as ladies and gentle
men. Though of pure bourgeois extraction, it is easy to
see from Van Dyck's portraits of himself that he had ac
quired the temperament and allure befitting a youth of
gentle birth. II pittore cavallerescowzs a good nickname,
for if he was cav a Her esc o in himself and his attitude to his
brother-artists, he was also the same in his portraits, in
which he seldom failed to give his sitter, whatever his rank
in life, the appearance of aristocratic breeding and refine
ment. Genoa was a city of rich, noble families, who main
tained an oligarchic government over the state, as at
Venice. These families inhabited great palaces, on which
35

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
they lavished great wealth, and in many of which the same
great families dwell even in the twentieth century. The
two ruling families in Van Dyck's time were those of Doria
and Spinola, who contended for the supremacy of govern
ment. , With the latter family Van Dyck was specially
connected. He painted the famous general, Ambrogio
Spinola, more than once. Cornelius de Wael seems also
to have been employed by the same patron to record his
military achievements at Ostend, Breda, and elsewhere.
Ambrogio Spinola's son, Filippo, was married about 1623
to Geronima Doria, daughter of Paolo Doria, procurator
of the Republic, and his daughter Polissena was the wife
of Don Diego Filippo Guzman, Marques de Legafiez,
Spanish envoy to the Republic of Genoa. All of these
personages were painted by Van Dyck. Legafiez was the
agent through which the painter obtained commissions for
Spain, and through him Van Dyck may have become ac
quainted with the work of Velazquez. The other great
houses of Brignole-Sala, Grimaldi, Durazzo, Balbi, Palla-
vicini, Lomellini, Imperiali, Cattaneo, to mention only a
few of the names — then, and still, well known and domin
ant in Genoa — were all laid open to the magic brush of Van
Dyck. Up to the end of the eighteenth century the bulk
of these portraits remained in the palaces for which they
had been painted,and a long list of paintings by Van Dyck
is given by the Genoese historian, C. G. Ratti, in his edi
tion of Soprani's Lives of the Genoese Painters and his
Guide to the Chief Sights in Genoa (second edition pub
lished in 1780). Since that date many of these portraits
36

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
have left their native country, and the Genoese portraits
by Van Dyck are ranked amongst the most highly prized
treasures of the modern millionaire. The migration from
Genoa of the series of paintings by Van Dyck from the
Cattaneo Palace, including the famous full-length of Elena
Grimaldi, Contessa Cattaneo, which was sold for a fabu
lous price to an American collection, was a great loss to
Italy, although it must be confessed that the paintings were
thereby rescued from an unjustifiable neglect. It is satis
factory to think that two, at all events, of this series were
secured for the National Gallery. Through the generosity
of some of her great citizens the city of Genoa has been
able to enter into permanent possession of some of these
treasures. The famous portraits of Anton Giulio, Marchese
di Brignole-Sala, on horseback, and his wife, Paola Ador-
no, remain fortunately the chief attraction of the Palazzo
Rosso, now the public museum, at Genoa. The White
Boy in theDurazzo Palace is but one more noteworthy ex
ample of the treasures which the city of Genoa can hardly
afford to lose. Too many of the portraits of the Spinola,
Balbi, Lomellini, and other families have, like those of
the Cattaneo family, quitted Genoa for ever.
The most remarkable thing about the whole series
of Genoese portraits by Van Dyck is the grandiose air of
distinction with which he invests his sitters. His male
portraits have already acquired that look of romantic
melancholy which is in strong contrast to the exuberant
vitality of Rubens, or the full-blooded healthiness of a
Titian portrait. Genoa was a great rendezvous of the
37

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Spanish aristocracy, and Van Dyck may have imbibed
from their society something of the haughty insouciance
of the Spanish grandee. In the fateful look which is to
be found in Van Dyck's Italian portraits we can trace
that spirit of unrest and anxiety which is to be found in
the portraits of so different a thinker as Lorenzo Lotto.
The great Genoese ladies were a simpler problem. To
live, love, and wear fine clothes would seem to be the
duty of maiden, bride, or mother in Van Dyck's por
traits. There is more character in the homely bourgeois
ladies who were painted by Van Dyck in his youth at
Antwerp than in many of the proud and gorgeous dames
who stand scornfully on the steps of their palaces at
Genoa. There is more life and humour in the Jordaens-
like babies and children of the early days at Antwerp
than in such superb little aristocrats as the Balbi children
of the Lucas collection in the National Gallery. One
feels that a century or so later Van Dyck would, like
Romney, have been the ideal painter of an Eton boy.
It is interesting to watch the transition from the
vigorous hand of youth in the Antwerp style, with its
touch of mere animalism, to the passionate vigour and
romance of early manhood in the paintings at Genoa.
The story of Van Dyck at Genoa was broken once,
if not oftener. He was sent for to Sicily to paint at
Palermo a portrait of Philibert Emmanuel of Savoy,
Viceroy of Sicily, then part of the Spanish dominions.
This was in the summer of 1624, an(i m Juty °f tnat
year Van Dyck visited at Palermo the famous woman-
38

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
painter, Sofonisba Anguissola, who late in life had married
into the Lomellini family of Genoa, and had settled in
Palermo. Sofonisba was now ninety-six years of age, and
Van Dyck has left in his Sketch-Book a sketch of the old
lady and a note of his visit to her. He says that she was
still keenly interested in painting, and gave him some
good advice and some useful hints. Van Dyck quickly
obtained commissions at Palermo, especially for subjects
dealing with the patron saint of that city, the virgin saint
Rosalia. An outbreak of plague cut his visit short, and
he returned post-haste to Genoa, where he completed his
commissions for Palermo at his leisure.
There is some reason to think that Van Dyck paid
a flying visit to his native land in the year 1625. It
would appear that his absence abroad caused some diffi
culty in the winding-up of his late father's estate. He
was certainly absent from Antwerp on September 27,
1624, on which day his brother-in-law, Adriaen Diercx,
a notary at Antwerp, certified that his brother Anthony
was of full age, was abroad, and had said that any one
might settle his affairs for him. He was as certainly absent
on December 12, 1625, on which day his brothers and
sisters were called upon to certify that Anthony was still
out of the country.
On the other hand, there is the following evidence to
show the possibility of Van Dyck having been at Antwerp
in 1625. George Vertue, the engraver and diarist, notes
that Jonathan Richardson, the elder, the well-known
English painter and collector, had possessed a sketch and
39

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
part of a letter by Van Dyck, subscribed by the painter
himself, Ant0- Van Dyck, 16 d,Ottob- 1625, Anversa.
This drawing cannot, unfortunately, be traced, but there
seems no valid reason for doubting Vertue's accuracy.
The inscription, moreover, might possibly have been
{ Ant°- Van Dyck . . . di Anversa.'
In the Stroganoff collection at St. Petersburg there
is a fine portrait of Nicolas Rockox, the burgomaster of
Antwerp, who was so intimately connected with the life
of Rubens. This portrait was painted by Van Dyck and
engraved by Lucas Vorsterman. Of Vorsterman's en
graving several states exist showing curious differences.
Among the accessories in the picture is a bust of Demos
thenes, which, according to the letters of Peiresc to
Rubens, was acquired by Rockox in 1621 or 1622. The
second state bears Van Dyck's name as painter, which
was erased in the third, but restored in the fourth, when
the plate was much altered, and the name of Rockox
added, with the statement Eques, Ur bis Antwer pice consul
nonum. Rockox was burgomaster for the ninth and last
time in 1625. The fifth state bears Van Dyck's name
and the statement Anton: Van Dijck pinxit Anno. 1625.
Too much stress must not be laid upon this date, for
Vorsterman, the engraver, was living in London from
1624 to 1630, and Peiresc bought a print of Vorsterman's
engraving in 1627.
George Vertue supplies another piece of evidence in
a statement received through one Peeters, a painter, that
Mr. Remy, otherwise Remigius van Leemput, one of
40

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Van Dyck's principal assistants in London, with whom
Peeters was acquainted, ' has many times said that the
Duke of Buckingham that was embassador to France in
King Charles the first Time, being recall'd from France
came by the way of Flanders, where he meet with Van
dyke the Painter and had his Picture drawn by him, which
he brought over and showd the King, which the King
liked very well, and order'd Vandyke to be sent for over
to come and draw the Queen's Picture . . .' It is difficult
to discredit Mr. Remy's statement altogether, seeing that
he was certainly in personal touch with Van Dyck. If
the statement be true, the meeting between Van Dyck
and Buckingham must have taken place between June
1625, when Henrietta Maria arrived in England as queen
and bride, and August 1628, when Buckingham fell under
Felton's knife at Portsmouth.
During this period Buckingham's only visit to France
was on his luckless expedition to La Rochelle in 1627,
but in November 1625 Buckingham was on a special
embassy at The Hague, and if Van Dyck was at Antwerp
or Brussels in October, it would not be unreasonable to
suppose that he may have been received by Buckingham at
The Hague in November. Vertue states that he himself
had seen a portrait of Buckingham painted by Van Dyck.
Mr. Remy further stated, according to Peeters, that
'Vandyke acquainted the King that he came over express
to His Majesty, but desir'd leave he might go back and
settle his affairs, and then he whould come over again and
reside hear and so hee did.' This seems to corroborate a
f 4i

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
further tradition that Van Dyck came to London and
stayed with his friend and fellow-townsman, George Gel-
dorp, at the latter's house in Drury Lane, but returned to
Antwerp owing to the preponderating influence at court
still enjoyed by Daniel My tens. If this all took place in
December 1625, it would still fit in with the certificate of
his sisters that Van Dyck was out of the country at that
date. It is noteworthy that during the year 1626 there
is very little definite information as to the life and work of
Anthony Van Dyck. The only evidence of his presence
at Genoa lies in two portraits of Gian Vincenzo Imperiale,
one of which has lately passed into a great American col
lection, and the other is in the Brussels Gallery. Both of
these portraits are, however, hardly worthy of Van Dyck's
great Genoese tradition, and may very well be the work
of one of his numerous imitators at Genoa, such as G. B.
Carbone. Apart from the possible direct invitation from Buck
ingham, and the former, and, as it would seem, unceas
ing patronage of the Earl and Countess of Arundel,
there were other agencies which would impel Van Dyck
to try his fortunes in France and England. Genoa, as
a great trade centre, was the meeting-place of many
persons concerned in the newly discovered sport of
picture-dealing. There Van Dyck met Nicholas Lanier,
nominally one of the king's musicians, but really an
agent to buy pictures on behalf of King Charles I., and
who was about to arrange with Daniel Nys for the pur
chase of the great collection of pictures belonging to
42

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
the late Duke of Mantua. Orazio Gentileschi, an Italian
painter of considerable repute, was at Genoa on a similar
errand. Francois Langlois of Chartres, a dealer in en
gravings and the like at Paris, whose portrait Van Dyck
painted as a bagpipe player, was a recognised agent and
dealer on behalf of the Earl of Arundel and other
collectors. Lumagne, a banker of Lyons, was also one
of Van Dyck's sitters. Van Dyck painted them all, and
each one no doubt advised him to pay court to the new
art-loving king in England. It is known that he crossed
the Alps by the Mount Cenis route, and was delayed at
St. Jean de Maurienne by fever, where he painted a portrait
of his host's daughter. It is also known that he visited
the famous antiquary, Peiresc, Rubens's friend and corre
spondent, at Aix, in Provence. A portrait, called Prince
D'Angri, probably Prince Tingry, which has lately passed
with the Salting Collection to the National Gallery, sug
gests that Van Dyck may have passed a short time at the
court of Luxembourg, through which territory he would
pass on his return to his native land. Another event may
have had a powerful influence in guiding the plans of
Anthony Van Dyck. In 1626 Rubens lost his wife,
Isabella Brant, and took his sorrow so much to heart that
he abandoned regular painting for a time, and assuaged
his grief by travelling and diplomacy, that partook to
some extent of political intrigue. There was thus a place
open at the moment in Antwerp, which Van Dyck alone
of living Flemish artists was capable of filling.
It is just possible that further details may still be dis-
43

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
covered of Van Dyck's residence at Genoa, which would
throw light on his work and whereabouts in the years
1626-27. Lucas van Uffel, a rich merchant of Antwerp,
whose portrait Van Dyck painted at Genoa (now at Stafford
House), was a special friend of the painter, and received
constant news of him through Cornelius de Wael. Up to
quite recent times the letters between De Wael and Van
Uffel were known to exist, and they may yet be discovered.
A better fate attended the correspondence between Van
Dyck and Giambattista Paggi,a Genoese painter, who died
in 1627, and whose letters still exist. It is clear that Van
Dyck returned to Antwerp some time in 1627, as in that
year he painted Pieter Stevens, almoner of the town, a
rich collector and amateur at Antwerp. This portrait of
Stevens has lately been identified in the Mauritshuis at The
Hague. It is noteworthy that in the portrait of Prince
Tingry, already mentioned, and that of Pieter Stevens, the
sitter wears a richly embroidered glove, a usual circum
stance, and a luxury confined to the noble and wealthy
classes. The portrait of Stevens led evidently to the com
mission for Van Dyck to paint the portrait of Stevens's
bride, Anna Wake, daughter of Lionel Wake, to whom
Stevens was married in the Church of St. Walburga on
March 12, 1628, the date 1628 appearing on her portrait
by Van Dyck, which hangs as a companion to her hus
band's portrait at The Hague.
Lionel Wake, the father of this young lady, was an
English merchant at Antwerp, a wealthy financier and
agent, through whom the Regent, Archduchess Isabella,
44

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
transacted much business. He was the friend and agent
of Rubens, and of Sir Dudley Carleton at The Hague.
Throughout 1627 tne political intrigues were going on,
by which Buckingham sought to negotiate between the
English and Spanish Governments. Rubens was one of
the agents in these matters, and so were Balthasar Gerbier
and the Abbe* Scaglia, who were backwards and forwards
between London, The Hague, and Brussels. Most of the
actors in this drama are known to us through portraits
by Van Dyck, and probably Lionel Wake and the rest of
his family were also among the painter's sitters. The assas
sination of Buckingham in 1628 put an end to all this
political business,and was, perhaps, a factor in Van Dyck's
decision to settle again at Antwerp. There is further evid
ence to denote his presence in his native city. His sister,
Cornelia, died in September 1627, and was buried in the
churchyard of the Beguinage at Antwerp. Anthony Van
Dyck seems to have been much attached to his sisters,
and on March 3, 1628, he made his will before a notary
at Antwerp. In this document he described himself as
1 painter, bachelor, and in good health,' and made two
older sisters, Susanna and Isabella, who were also bdguines,
his heirs, directing that after their deaths his property
should be divided between the poor at Antwerp and the
Convent of St. Michael. He made no mention of his elder
brother, Frans Van Dyck, or his sister Catherina, who
was married to the notary, Adriaen Diercx, but he pro
vided for the support of an old woman who had been in his
service and that of his dead father. His younger brother, 45

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Theodorus, was a priest, and another sister, Anna, a nun
of the Facontine Convent, so that they could not receive
any property. At the same time the two sisters, Susanna
and Isabella,made wills, leaving their fortune to the painter.
Anthony Van Dyck took the further step of affiliating him
self to the Confraternity of Celibates, which was directed
by the Society of Jesus at Antwerp. In these transactions
Van Dyck shows himself in an amiable light, as of a warm,
impulsive, and affectionate nature, with a strong leaning
towards religious fervour.

CHAPTER IV
ON May 27, 1628, James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, an
English courtier and one of Buckingham's agents
on the Continent, writes from Brussels to the Duke
of Buckingham and says, 'At my comeing into Antwerp
(upon Saturday the 1 7 May curr1), I found that Don Carlos
de Colonna, and Monsr- Rubin were out of towne, gone
the day before unto Brussels; as I signified in my former
dispatch (of 1 8 past) unto my Lord Conaway. The day
following after dinner, taking occasion to see some curio
sities at Monsr- Vandigs, I met Monsr- Rubin there, newly
returned from Bruexelles ; which I knew not of until
that instant. . . .'
This statement is interesting, as proving that Rubens
was home at Antwerp when Van Dyck returned from Italy,
and that so far from resenting his arrival, he was on friendly
terms with his former assistant. Don Carlos de Colonna,
here mentioned, was appointed Spanish Ambassador to
England in 1629. Van Dyck drew his portrait in 1628,
and painted a large equestrian portrait of him, now in the
Colonna Gallery at Rome. Rubens was, however, im
mersed in politics, and shortly after this interview pro
ceeded on an embassy to Paris and Madrid, and in 1629
to London ; it was not until the summer of 1630 that he
returned to Antwerp. 47

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
The field at Antwerp was thus open for Anthony
Van Dyck, and, as has been already suggested, the control
of the great picture-manufactory in Rubens's house may
have been left under the superintendence of Van Dyck, for
no other of Rubens's assistants would have been capable
of directing it. At all events, commissions of importance
began to pour in on Van Dyck from churches and public
bodies, in addition to portraits of official personages and
private friends. It is recorded that Van Dyck lived in a
modest house, very different to the great hotel built by
Rubens, and that he possessed a valuable collection of
paintings by Titian, including probably the famous
' Cornaro Family,' which he had in his house in England,
and other artists, as well as the curiosities which the Earl
of Carlisle went to see.
It is difficult, as before, to draw a line between the
sacred paintings executed by Van Dyck at Genoa, and
those painted immediately after his return to Antwerp.
Some of his best and finest renderings of the Holy Family
subject belong to this period. The Mystic Marriage of
St. Catherine at Buckingham Palace, the Holy Family
at Turin, the Virgin and Child with St. Catherine at
Grosvenor House, a reminiscence of Correggio, the Rest
in Egypt at Munich, and the splendid Virgin and Child
with two donors in the Louvre, form a group of paintings
which would have established Van Dyck in high rank as
a history painter, even if he had never painted a portrait
at all. The famous Christ Crucified was in demand, and
the churches and religious confraternities beset him with
48

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
commissions. One of the earliest was the renowned Ecstasy
of St. Augustine, painted for St. Augustine's church in
Antwerp and finished in June 1 62 8, a huge painting con
structed on academical lines, akin to those of the Bolog-
nese Academy. The Lamentation over the Dead Christ,
or Nood Gods in popular phraseology, was a subject in
which Van Dyck specially excelled, and the treatment of
this subject in the paintings of the Antwerp Museum, the
Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin, the Louvre, and the
Munich Gallery, all show a dramatic scene of poignant
religious feeling, quite different from the renderings of
the same subject in the atelier of Rubens. One of Van
Dyck's earliest duties after his return was to complete, for
the Dominican Sisters, the great painting of the Crucified
Christ between St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena,
which he had promised to execute as a votive offering to
his father's memory. Van Dyck's affiliation to a branch
of the Society of Jesus led him to paint some of his most
admirable compositions from subjects connected with the
Jesuit Order. Among these were the Vision of St. Anthony
of Padua, in the Brera Gallery at Milan; St. Rosalia receiv
ing a Wreath from the Infant Christ, and the Virgin
appearing to the Blessed Hermann Joseph, both in the
Imperial Gallery at Vienna.
In compositions of this kind on a very large scale,Van
Dyck was not seen at his best; whereas Rubens revelled in
a huge canvas, Van Dyck's powers failed him when stretched
so far. Rubens was a master of stage-composition, like
Tintoretto, and the bigger the space to fill, the more
g 49

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
eagerly and vigorously Rubens set to work to fill it. Van
Dyck, on the other hand, had no originality of construc
tion, no scruples as to borrowing, so that many of his sub
jects are based flagrantly on compositions by Rubens or
Titian, such as the Elevation of the Cross at Courtray,
famous for the recent robbery and recovery of the picture,
the great Crucifixion at Malines, and the Crucifixion au
coup d'e'ponge in St. Michael's church at Ghent. More
peculiar to Van Dyck are the two paintings at Termonde,
the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Crucifixion with
St. Francis, which belong to a rather later date. Unfor
tunately in nearly every case these great paintings by Van
Dyck have suffered irretrievably. They are usually painted
in a low tone of colour, and with pigments which have
proved sensitive to the cold and damp and other risks,
shared by so many paintings which have been exposed for
centuries in the great ill-ventilated churches to which
they have belonged. For this reason VanDyck's machines,
as they have been irreverently called, have never met with
the recognition which they deserve. It may be remarked
that a similar fate has attended the works of the great
painters of the Bolognese School. The waning influence
of the Church from the objective point of view has seri
ously diminished the value of such paintings as religious
emblems. The Church itself has for the most part proved
itself a careless and unintelligent guardian of the trea
sures of art which pious generosity may have deposited
under its care. A work of art, once valued in hard cash,
quickly loses its spiritual and even its artistic purity. If
50

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
highly valued, it usually meets a mere pagan fate in a
gallery or museum ; while if considered unworthy of this
honour, it is seldom considered worthy of protection.
For secular patrons Van Dyck was called upon to
paint the mythological subjects then in fashion, though
of those which he is known to have painted, only some
few have survived as worthy of notice. Rinaldo and
Armida was a favourite subject, and the one which event
ually paved his way into England. Venus at the Forge
of Vulcan was another subject in which Van Dyck took
pleasure. Though he exercised special trouble and skill
in painting the nude torsos of both sexes, Van Dyck
never showed the abandon of Rubens or Jordaens, and
the most sensuous of his paintings could not be out of
place in a lady's drawing-room. In such subjects he was
frankly Titiancsque, and influenced by the restrained
passion of Correggio or Guido, rather than by the coarse
licence of his own native country. In one department, that
of child angels, or putti,Van Dyck took a special delight,
even if in this he could not claim any originality of his own.
As a portrait-painter, however, Van Dyck had at
tained to complete success before the time of his actual
return to Antwerp. In spite of many competent practi
tioners of the same art at Antwerp, painters so skilled that
it requires some care to prevent their works from being
fathered on Van Dyck, Van Dyck was without a rival.
With his wonderful power of assimilation and of accom
modating himself to the circumstances in which he was
placed, Van Dyck reverted on his return to Antwerp to
5i

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
a Flemish manner, though strengthened and warmed by
his Italian experience. He painted the portraits of most
citizens of note at Antwerp, or at the Spanish court in
Brussels. The influence of the Spanish court, with its
newly donned austerity and its negation of colour, is illus
trated in the portraits by Van Dyck, as well as in those by
his great contemporary, Velazquez. There are certain
portraits in which Van Dyck seems to be imitating Velaz
quez, such as the full-length portrait of the Due a" Ar en-
berg in the collection of Earl Spencer at Althorp, and the
portrait of the Cardinal-Infant Ferdinand of Austria at
Madrid. Although, however, Van Dyck and Velazquez
were almost exact contemporaries in age, Van Dyck's art
matured with much greater rapidity than did that of the
Spanish painter. Before the year 1628, in which Rubens
visited Madrid and diverted the aims of art there, Van
Dyck had accomplished all the great works of his Genoese
period, and was renowned, whereas Velazquez was still
labouring and had barely succeeded with his earliest por
traits of King Philip IV. Through the influence of Spinola
and Legafiez, the two painters may have known each
other by repute, but paintings by Van Dyck are likely to
have found their way to Madrid much earlier than paint
ings by Velazquez could have arrived at Genoa or been
known at Antwerp. The portrait of Ferdinand of Austria
has some affinity to the famous Fraga portrait of Philip IV.
by Velazquez, but Van Dyck's portrait must have been
painted in 1634, while that by Velazquez was not painted
till 1644, three years after Van Dyck's death. Great
52

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
imitator as Van Dyck was, dates would seem to prove,
that if any influence was exerted by one painter on the
other, the Spaniard must have been influenced by the
Fleming. The wise old Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia,
Regent of the Netherlands, had been left a widow shortly
before Van Dyck's return to Antwerp, and had embraced
the order of the Poor Clares, adopting their religious dress.
In this dress she was painted several times by Van Dyck,
and several examples of the portrait are known, the kindly
austerity of the face being cleverly enhanced by the treat
ment of the white and grey robes. The Regent appointed
Van Dyck to be her court-painter at an annual salary of
250 gulden. In this capacity Van Dyck painted many
of the leading personages at the archduchess's court, and
especially the commanders of the Spanish forces of the
Netherlands. Spinola, the hero of the siege of Breda, he
had already painted, and next Hendrik, Comte de Bergh,
and then Francisco de Legafiez, Marques de Moncada,
whose equestrian portrait by Van Dyck is in the Louvre.
Carlo de Colonna, Ottavio Piccolomini, Italian noblemen
in the Spanish service, were among his sitters, as were
Jean de Montfort, the court chamberlain, the Marques
de Mirabella, Don Alvarez Bazan, Marques de Santa
Cruz, and Don Emmanuel Frockas Pereira y Pimentel,
Conde di Feria, all notabilities of the Spanish court.
Wolfgang Wilhelm, Duke of Julich and Cleve, who had
just beenraisedtothe independent sovereignty of Newburg
in the Palatinate, was an eager collector of Van Dyck's

¦ 3

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
paintings, and from him derive many of the renowned
examples of Van Dyck's art which are now in the Munich
Gallery. The great local families of Arenberg, Ligne, De
Croy,Tassis, names still famous in Austrian history, all con
tributed to swell the number of his distinguished sitters,
many of them being ladies. The rich merchants of Ant
werp were painted by him, such as Eberhard Jabach of
Cologne, and the leading citizens in the Government, such
as Philippe le Roy, Seigneur de Ravels and his wife, in the
Wallace Collection. Rubens on his return sat again to
Van Dyck, as did his fair second wife, Helena Fourment.
The full-length portrait of Helena in a black dress with a
feather-fan, whichpassedfrom the Houghton Collection to
the Imperial Collection at Petersburg, where it is usually
attributed to Rubens, is said to have been painted by Van
Dyck to fill a particular space in one of the rooms in the
house of Rubens at Antwerp. It would not be possible to
enumerate strictly the whole list of admirable portraits exe
cuted by Van Dyck at this happy period of his existence.
In August 163 1 Marie de' Medicis, Queen-Mother
of France, took refuge in the Netherlands, where she re
mained for eight years, and resided at Antwerp for some
weeks. The queen was already acquainted with Rubens,
who had painted for her the great series of paintings for
the Palais du Luxembourg, and she now made acquaint
ance with Van Dyck, who painted more than one portrait
of her. She was afterwards joined by her favourite son,
Gaston, Due d'Orleans, next heir at the time to the throne
of France, who had on January 163 2 married Marguerite,
54

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
sister of Charles, Duke of Lorraine, who was in active war
fare with Louis XIII. of France and Cardinal Richelieu, in
which Gaston took rather an ignoble part. The Duke of
Lorraine, defeated in the field, abandoned his country to
his brother, and took refuge in Brussels, where he set up
a kind of hostile court, aided by the queen-mother, and by
his sister, Marguerite of Orleans, and Henriette, Princesse
de Phalsbourg. Of this royal circle Van Dyck has left
several portraits, though they were probably not painted
before 1634. At some time Van Dyck paid a visit to
the court of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange and his
wife, Amalia van Solms, in Holland, and painted several
pictures for them. This may have been before he settled
in Antwerp, but the style of painting in the portraits of
the Prince and Princess of Orange suggests a later date,
perhaps on his way to England. It must have been on
this journey to Holland that Van Dyck paid his visit to
Frans Hals at Haarlem, which has become famous, and
also to his old fellow-pupil, Hendrik du Bois, a one-armed
painter, who had settled at Rotterdam with his wife,
Helena, daughter of Eland Gysbrechts Tromper of that
city. The portraits of Du Bois and his wife, which were
kept together in English collections for about two cen
turies, are now separated, the husband's portrait being at
Frankfurt, the wife's in the Art Institute at Chicago.
The attempts to induce Van Dyck to come to Eng
land in the service of King Charles I., which had ap
parently been interrupted by the death of the Duke of
Buckingham, were soon resumed. The Earl and Countess 55

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
of Arundel were now again in favour, and naturally anxious
to persuade Van Dyck to come. Nicholas Lanier, one
of the king's most trusted agents, had shown to Charles
the portrait of himself, painted by Van Dyck at Genoa.
Michel le Blon, another artist, political agent, and art-
dealer, whose portrait by Van Dyck is at Amsterdam, is
said to have also recommended the painting of Van Dyck.
As earlyas 1629 Endymion Porter, a great favourite at the
court of England, was negotiating with Van Dyck for
a painting of Rinaldo and Armida on behalf of King
Charles I. The queen-mother, Marie de' Medicis, may
have extolled Van Dyck to her daughter, Queen Henrietta
Maria, in England. Rubens was now back at Antwerp in
full work, and at no time was Van Dyck able to stand on
the same level as his great master. All seemed to point
to a new opening for his talents at the court in London,
where he could have no rival. The final impulse seems
to have been given through that shifty schemer, Sir Bal-
thasar Gerbier, an agent of the then all-powerful Richard
Weston, Earl of Portland, for whom he had purchased at
Brussels in December 1631a painting of the Virgin and
Child with St. Catherine, which Van Dyck repudiated
as his work. On March 13, 163 1/2, Gerbier wrote to
Weston that Van Dyck, who had wished to go to Eng
land, and asked him to speak to the queen-mother and the
archduchess about taking their portraits over to England
to show the king, had a sudden caprice not to go ; but the
same day Gerbier wrote to King Charles I. from Brussels,
that Van Dyck was there, and said that he was resolved to
56

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
go over to England. King Charles took a lively interest
in the arrival of Anthony Van Dyck. Edward Norgate,
herald, miniature-painter, and Clerk of the Signet to the
Crown, a protdgi of the Earl of Arundel,a friend of Gerbier,
and a relative by marriage of Nicholas Lanier, was ap
pointed to receive and lodge Van Dyck, and received by
warrant fifteen shillings a day ' for the dyett and lodging
of Signior Anthonio Van Dike and his servants ; the same
to begin from the first day of Aprill just to continue during
the said Vandikes residence there.' Sir Francis Winde-
bank, Secretary of State, was instructed ' to speak with
Inigo Jones concerning a house for Vandyck.' A house
was found for him in the Blackfriars, near the Thames,
then one of the chief causeways of London, and where he
would be unfettered by the jurisdiction of the London
Guild. Several other foreign artists were already resident
in the same quarter. A summer residence was provided
for him in the royal palace at Eltham in Kent, a few miles
from London.
Van Dyck found few competitors in London. Daniel
Mytens, the court- painter, was still employed on useful,
though rather uninspired portrait work. It is clear that
Mytens was not actually superseded, but that he continued
to paint official portraits for the king for some years after
Van Dyck arrived in England. Eventually, according to
tradition, he acknowledged the supremacy of Van Dyck
and begged for leave to return to his native country.
Cornelius Jansen, or Johnson, van Ceulen, in spite of his
Dutch ancestry and name, was a born Londoner, and
h 57

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
always regarded himself as such. This excellent artist
may be looked upon as the first native-born artist of great
merit to practise in England. There is a certain sym
pathy of feeling between his portraits and those by Van
Dyck. Jansen's style was popular in England, and Van
Dyck quickly appropriated and assimilated it, and by his
dazzling brilliance put the tender, sensitive, but prosaic
efforts of Cornelius Jansen far in the background. Por
trait-painting had degenerated into a mere trade, an em
ployment for hack-artists in back shops, where such
portraits were turned out to order under the direction of
such artist-publishers as John de Critz, Robert Peake,
and others. The trade in pictures was increasing, and
at the country fairs and in the shop-windows, portraits
of celebrities, drolleries, or small church pictures were
always to be found. Van Dyck rescued painting in Eng
land from this phase of mere craftsmanship and restored
it to the position of a Fine Art.
The king and queen lost no time in sitting to Van
Dyck, and the first important commission seems to have
been the great Family Piece at Windsor Castle, painted
in 1632, and containing portraits of the king and queen
with their two eldest children. On July 5, 1632, the
king conferred the honour of knighthood on Anthony
Van Dyck at St. James's Palace, and appointed him prin
cipal painter-in-ordinary to their majesties. On April
20, 1633, the Lord Chamberlain was ordered to provide
a chain and medal, of one hundred and ten pounds value,
to be presented unto Sir Anthony Van Dyck. In the
58

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
same year the king gave the painter a pension of £200 per
annum paid quarterly, ' any restraint formerly made by
our late dear Father, or by us, for payment or allowance
of Pension or Annuities or any declaration, significa
tion, Matter, or Thing to the contrary in any case not
withstanding.' Van Dyck's breach of contract with King
James I. was thus condoned and forgotten. Numerous
entries occur in the Privy Seal Payments of payments to
Van Dyck for pictures done for the King. The portraits
of King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria at this date
are gay and cheerful, the king rather stolid but very dt-
bonnaire, the queen a sprightly and winning brunette,
both of them attired in gay colours, their hearts full,
apparently, of happiness and content.
In spite of the honourable position occupied by An
thony Van Dyck at the court of Charles I., he did not lose
sight of his native land, or of the chances for exercising
his art there. On December 1 , 1 6 3 3 , his former patroness,
the Archduchess Isabella, closed her long and useful
life. A new Regent for the Spanish Netherlands had to
be appointed, and King Philip IV. of Spain selected his
younger brother, Ferdinand, usually known as the Cardi
nal-Infant of Spain, for this important post. Meanwhile the
regency was held by Thomas of Savoie-Carignan, nephew
to the late Archduchess, who had just succeeded Mon
cada as commander-in-chief of the Spanish forces in the
Netherlands. VanDyck obtained leave to go over to Ant
werp to settle his affairs. The queen was anxious for
his brother Theodorus to come over and be one of her
59

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
chaplains, but he could not be persuaded. On March 28,
1634, Van Dyck acquired a property at Antwerp in the
Seigneurie of Steen, which he settled the following April
on his sister Susanna.
Meanwhile a large concourse of friends and relatives
assembled at Brussels to welcome the new Regent. There
were the exiled families of Orleans and Lorraine, includ
ing the fair Beatrice deCusance,Princesse deCante-Croix,
a heroine of romance, and the putative wife of Charles II.,
reigning Duke of Lorraine. Her portrait by Van Dyck is
one of the chief treasures of Windsor Castle. Van Dyck
painted more than one portrait of Thomas of Savoy, includ
ing the great equestrian portrait now in the royal gallery at
Turin. Van Dyck was also employed to paint an immense
group of the Town Magistrates of Brussels, which was un
fortunately destroyed during the siege of Brussels in 1 695.
The painter settled in a house close to the Hotel de Ville
in Brussels, with the sign of' Le Paradis,' and there awaited
the joyous entry of the new Regent, which took place on
November 4, 1634. The Regent sat to Van Dyck for
more than one official portrait.
With the close of these festivities Van Dyck was due
back in England. He stopped a little time at Antwerp,
and seemed to have completed there the large painting of
the Adoration of the Shepherds for Termonde, for which
he had received a commission in 1631 before he left for
England. Early in 1635 he was back in London, and
resumed his duties for the king and queen.

/

CHAPTER V
THE portraits of King Charles I . and Queen Henrietta
Maria, painted by Van Dyck, have left an enduring
mark on the history of their time. It may even be
said that history itself is written in the portraits of the
king and queen, their children, and the gay court around
them, bravely clad in bright colours and lace, unconscious,
and yet apparently not without some premonition in their
eyes, of the great tragic drama on which the curtain was
soon to rise. Charles and Henrietta Maria showered
favours on Van Dyck. They constantly visited him in his
house at Blackfriars, and a special causeway was con
structed to enable the royal party to land from their barge
and enter the painter's house privately. The portraits of
Charles I. are world-famous. In addition to the great
Family Piece, and the double portrait of Charles I. re
ceiving a Wreath from Henrietta Maria, painted by Van
Dyck before his return to Antwerp and Brussels in 1634,
he now completed many other portraits of the king and
queen and their children. Chief among these were
Charles I. on a White Ftorse attended by M. St. Antoine,
the great picture at Windsor Castle, painted in 1635 and
modelled on his earlier portrait of Anton Giulio Brignole-
Salaat Genoa; Charles I., standing figure in Parliament 61

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Robes, painted in 1 63 6, now in St. George's Hall at Wind
sor Castle; Charles I. on a Dun Horse, painted about
1637, and based on the famous portrait of Charles V. at
the battle of Miihlberg by Titian, the original sketch of
which is in the royal collection at Buckingham Palace,
while the great amplified version, after having belonged to
the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, at Tervueren, near
Brussels, was acquired thence by the great Duke of Marl
borough, for his gallery at Blenheim Palace, and has
now found a permanent home in the National Gallery;
Charles I. standing by his horse, attended by an equerry
[Le Roi a la chasse), now in the Louvre at Paris. These
are but the principal paintings of the king ; Van Dyck
painted him over and over again, in armour, at whole
length, or with his hand on a globe, or on a helmet, or in
the black robes of St. George, as in the painting at Dres
den, which appears to be a faithful copy of the painting by
Van Dyck which perished in the great fire at Whitehall.
One of the most famous portraits of Charles I. is the
portrait in three positions at Windsor Castle, which was
painted in 1637, and sent to Rome to the celebrated
sculptor, Bernini, to make a bust from. This triple por
trait seems to be based either on the well-known triple
portrait of Cardinal Richelieu by Philippe deChampaigne
in the National Gallery, or else perhaps on the triple self-
portrait of Lorenzo Lotto, which Van Dyck may have seen
in Italy. The story is well known how that Bernini re
marked on the voltofunesto or fateful aspect of the king,
and the ominous circumstances which attended it on its
62

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
arrival in England have been often recorded. It was so
much admired that Henrietta Maria wished to have a bust
made of herself, and had three separate portraits of herself
painted by Van Dyck for a similar purpose. Owing to
the outbreak of the civil war, the paintings were never sent
to Italy; two of them remained at Windsor Castle, and
the third was given by the king to Lord Denbigh.
Queen Henrietta Maria herself owes her place in his
tory to a great extent to the brush of Van Dyck. The
little French princess, brunette and mignonne, even if, as
her cousin the Electress Sophia alleged, her figure was
crooked and her teeth wronged her mouth, received from
the painter just that degree of flattery which softens defects,
but retains the general character without ignoring them
altogether. Not even in the portraits by Van Dyck does
Henrietta Maria appear as a merely beautiful woman ; she
is always the queen, and in a gallery of portraits her like
ness is easily distinguished by the unconscious possession
of this peculiar attribute. She appears standing at whole
length in white silk, in yellow or amber, in blue, some
times with a* black hat and her favourite dwarf attendant,
Jeffrey Hudson, or a little female dwarf; sometimes the
queen is seen to the knees, in black, yellow, or blue, usu
ally holding a bunch of roses in her hands; sometimes she
is seated, but the charm is always present, and, when ab
sent, is a proof that the painting in question never came
under Van Dyck's own eye. It is interesting to compare
the likenesses of the king and queen painted by Van
Dyck with the somewhat homelier, and probably more
63

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
accurate, presentments of them by Daniel Mytens. The
portraits by Mytens are deeply interesting, but they fail to
fascinate like the portraits by Van Dyck. Mytens con
tinued to paint for the king long after Van Dyck's ap
pointment as court-painter, and it is interesting to note
that the official portraits, presented by the king to his
ministers and friends, were usually entrusted to Mytens,
and the services of Van Dyck reserved for more special
occasions. The commissions from the king and queen were by
no means confined to portraits, as in addition to the Rin
aldo and Armida ordered by Endymion Porter, and the
Cupid and Psyche at Hampton Court Palace, it has been
handed down, on the authority of Sir Kenelm Digby, that
Van Dyck painted for King Charles the Dance of the
Muses, Apollo flaying Marsyas, Bacchanals, and Venus
and Adonis. One of the principal versions of Mary,
Christ, and many Angels dancing, now in the Hermitage
at Petersburg, was a commission from Queen Henrietta
Maria. Next to the portraits of the king and queen came the
portraits of their children. It was one of the first tasks
entrusted to the painter after his return to London in
1635. Three children now adorned the royal nursery,
Charles, Prince of Wales, aged five, Princess Mary,
aged three, and James, Duke of York, not yet two years
old. These three children are the subject of the delight
ful group, painted by Van Dyck, which the queen sent as a
present to her sister Christina of Savoy, and which is now
64

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
in the gallery at Turin. It is amusing to read from the
queen's letter, that this painting, one of Van Dyck's most
perfect achievements in the management of colour and
grace, gave displeasure to the king, because the children
were painted without their pinners. This mistake was
rectified in the better-known group of the same three chil
dren, now at Windsor Castle, of which various replicas
and innumerable copies exist. During the next few years
the nursery received new additions: Princess Elizabeth,
born in December 1635, and Princess Anne in March
1637. Van Dyck painted the five children for the king,
the original being apparently the painting also now at
Windsor Castle. He also painted the little Prince of
Wales in armour for the queen, of which various versions
exist, one of the best being at Welbeck Abbey.
In matters of art and external display, the fashionable
world of London has always shown itself disposed to imi
tate and follow, rather than to choose and select on its own
account. Van Dyck, the charming painter with the lan
guorous eyes, the auburn hair, and the long white hands
became the rage, and all courtiers, male and female,
flocked to him as sitters for their portraits. Society ranged
itself in great family groups, such as the Stuarts, nearly
related to the king, comprising the Duke of Richmond
and Lenox and his family; the Villiers cousins, sprung
from the brilliant Duke of Buckingham and his brothers ;
the Herberts, of whom the Earl of Pembroke and Mont
gomery was Lord Chamberlain, and very powerful at the
court; the Cecils, Stanleys, Sackvilles, Spencers, Russells, 65

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
and Cavendishes. Noteworthy also are the two brothers
Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, and Henry Rich, Earl
of Holland, sons of that Lady Rich whom Sir Philip
Sidney addressed as ' Stella.' Special mention must be
made of Van Dyck's intimate friend Sir Kenelm Digby,
and his wife Venetia, whose death in 1633 is commemo
rated by the allegorical portrait of her, painted by order
of her husband to vindicate his wife's honour.
In the first year of the sojourn of Van Dyck in Eng
land, London society was excited by the wedding of the
brilliant young Philip, Lord Wharton, then only nineteen
years of age, to the daughter of the Earl of Lindsey. Van
Dyck painted the young bridegroom as a shepherd in gold
and brown, in the famous portrait now in the Hermitage
Gallery at Petersburg. Five years later he painted, for
the same Lord Wharton, an interesting series of portraits
of the Wharton and Cary families, with whom Van Dyck
seems to have been specially associated, some of which
group passed, with the earlier portrait of Philip, Lord
Wharton, into the Houghton Collection and the Hermi
tage at Petersburg ; among the series was the full-length
portrait of Arthur Goodwin, father of Lord Wharton's
second wife, now at Chatsworth, one of Van Dyck's most
brilliant studies in gold, brown and amber colouring. The
minor lights at the court are represented by such noted
persons as the Killigrews, Thomas Carew, and Sir John
Suckling, the poets ; Endymion Porter, and Inigo Jones ;
domestic politics by such figures as the Speakers, Sir John
Finch, Sir Thomas Hanmer, and Chaloner Chute ; while
66

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
history is written large in the famous portraits of Arch
bishop Laud and Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.
Among all the brilliant throng of admirers none were
more constant in their support than Van Dyck's original
patrons, the Earl and Countess of Arundel.
All seemed gay and festive in this gallant assembly,
but there was an undercurrent of ominous foreboding.
The great struggle between the Crown and the Commons
had begun, and clouds were threatening on the horizon.
The actual breaking of the storm was never witnessed by
Van Dyck, but many of his brilliant sitters were destined
for harder fare than court life at Whitehall, and to lay
down their lives for their king at Naseby, Edgehill, or
Marston Moor, or in unknown skirmishes, or sometimes,
like the beautiful boy-colonel, Lord Francis Villiers, with
his back against a tree and nineteen wounds on his front,
until even his enemies were moved to sympathetic grief.
In Van Dyck's portraits these young men seem to have
some foreboding of their doom, although this look was
little more in reality than an echo of Van Dyck's own
temperament, and his natural tendency to blend melan
choly with febrile activity. It is not surprising to find that
under this pressure of work the portraits of Van Dyck
show a tendency to deteriorate. More and more did he
leave to the band of assistants which he had grouped
round him. Like Rubens at Antwerp, his atelier in
London became a picture-manufactory. English clients
were easily pleased, as they have always been, and it was
sufficient to be in the fashion. The life led by the painter
67

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
would have taxed the health of many stronger men. Be
ginning work early in the morning, he had a succession
of sitters, each with their allotted time. Some of these he
retained to dinner, and then again to work. The evening
was given up to pleasure, to banqueting, and the society
of fair ladies, of whom some paid court to the painter,
while the painter himself distributed his attentions.
There is no reason to doubt the tradition, that he
and Sir Kenelm Digby wasted time, health, and money
on futile researches in chemistry and astrology. Such
a life meant great expenses, and as these increased, the
painter found increasing difficulty in obtaining payments
from the royal purse. When the king remonstrated with
him on his extravagance, the painter retorted that it was
impossible to keep open house for friends and mistresses
without such great expenses. We see Van Dyck in his
latest portraits becoming thin and wan in his face ; in the
well-known portrait of himself pointing to a sunflower, he
turns and shows his gold chain of office with an air of
deliberate suggestion. A feverish and restless activity
pervades his work.
So anxious did the king and queen become lest the
painter should be ruined by his life of hard work and
pleasure, that they thought it would be well for him to
enjoy the domestic comforts of an English home with a
wife of his own. Mary Ruthven, a granddaughter of the
Earl of Gowrie, was i&prote'ge'e of the court, and a marriage
was arranged between her and the painter, with great
social advantages to Van Dyck. The story goes that, his
68

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
ruling mistress, Margaret Lemon, tried to revenge herself
on the painter by mutilating his right hand. The marriage,
however, took place, just before a new and important event
occurred, which altered the whole course of Van Dyck's
life in London.
On May 30, 1640, Rubens died at Antwerp, still in
the vigour of artistic industry and creative power, at what
seems the early age of sixty-three. There was now only
one person who could possibly take command of the great
picture-manufactory at Antwerp, and this was Anthony
Van Dyck. Some of the school had found suitable work
elsewhere — Gaspar de Crayer with the Imperial Court at
Brussels, Justus van Egmont at Paris, where he had been
taken by Rubens to work on the great paintings of the
Palais du Luxembourg. Of the remainder, Jordaens was
looked upon as the best painter, and deservedly so, but by
temperament and general character he would have been
incapable of leadership. Theodor van Thulden, Abraham
van Diepenbeck,and the rest were capable of good second-
rate work. Van Dyck was the only possible successor.
A large commission had been given by the King of Spain
to Rubens and was awaiting completion. The Regent,
Ferdinand, told his brother that he had sent for Van Dyck
from England to complete the work.
This was the great opportunity in Van Dyck's career.
He had already shown symptoms of discontent with his
position in London, and a tendency to wrangle about
payments and commissions. His health was undermined
by the strain of his life of work and pleasure. His head
69

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
was turned, as it would appear, by this new position, and
he sent over word to the Regent that if he, Van Dyck,
consented to come over to Antwerp, he must not be ex
pected merely to finish the incomplete work of Rubens,
but must begin the work over again, as entirely his own.
So strange was his attitude, that at Antwerp they looked
on him as archifou. Eventually the King of Spain's com
mission was handed over to Gaspar de Crayer, and a fresh
commission promised to Van Dyck, who after all made
up his mind to come over to Antwerp. Affairs in England
had come to a straining-point, and the court was removed
from London, never, as it turned out, to settle back again
under Charles I. and Henrietta Maria.
In October 1640 Van Dyck was at Antwerp on St.
Luke's day, and was entertained with great pomp and
honour by his brother-artists and the members of the
Academy of Painting ; he was nominated eeredeken or
honorary dean of the Guild of St. Luke, an honour which
had only previously been conferred upon Rubens. It is
clear that Van Dyck made up his mind to quit the service
of King Charles I., which had obviously become one of
precarious profit, and settle at Antwerp under the aegis of
the King of Spain. Before doing so there was, however,
another venture to be made. Throughout life it was the
ambition of Van Dyck to meet Rubens in friendly rivalry
and compete on the same ground. The great series of
paintings executed by Rubens for Marie de' Medicis in
the Palais du Luxembourg at Paris were, and are still, the
object of widespread admiration. The paintings by Rubens
70

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
for the ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall were
also famous. Van Dyck had at one time hopes himself of
decoratingthe walls of the Banqueting House with a series
of paintings representing the Order of the Garter, and even
prepared designs, one of which has been preserved. Lack
of money and political pressure prevented Charles I. from
indulging in this expensive scheme, and indeed put an end
to Inigo Jones's great plans for the reconstruction of the
palace at Whitehall. This was a bitter disappointment to
Van Dyck, and when he heard that the King of France
was contemplating a new series of paintings in the Palace
of the Louvre, he went to Paris and proffered his services,
which he thought could hardly be refused. At Paris,
however, he excited the hostility of the French painters
to himself and his art, and the commission was given to
Nicolas Poussin and Simon Vouet. This rebuff seems to
have seriously affected Van Dyck. He returned to London
broken in health and spirits, as he was required by the
king to assist at the last flicker of the brilliant court, of
which the painter had been so conspicuous a member. In
May 1 64 1 a marriage was celebrated between the king's
eldest daughter, Mary, and the young William, Prince
of Orange, son of Prince Frederick Henry and Amalia van
Solms, who had formerly been among the patrons of Van
Dyck. The bride and bridegroom were but boy and girl,
and VanDyck painted them atwhole length, hand-in-hand,
for King Charles I., in a picture which was taken over to
Holland by their son, King William III., and is nowin the
Ryksmuseum at Amsterdam. 7i

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Van Dyck's health, however, gave great cause for
anxiety. He returned to Antwerp in October 1 641, to
make arrangements for his removal from England, and in
November was again in Paris . There he was offered a com
mission by Cardinal Mazarin, but was too ill to accept it.
His wife was about to bear a child in London, and ' Signor
Antonio ' returned across the sea, sick and weary, and,
as it turned out, for the last time. King Charles was
sincerely alarmed at the state of the painter's health, and
sent his own physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne, to attend
him, promising him a handsome reward if he could save
the painter's life. It was, however, too late. On December
1 , 1 64 1 , Lady Van Dyck gave birth to a daughter, who
was named Justiniana; on E)ecember 4 Van Dyck made his
will, and on December 9 he breathed his last, aged but
forty-two years, eight months, and seventeen days. Into
so short a space had he compressed the activity and stress
of a notable career. His infant daughter was baptized on
the very day of her father's death. Two days later the great
painter was laid to rest in St. Paul's Cathedral. His friend
and neighbour, Nicasius Rousseel, the king's jeweller,
was one of those who attended the funeral, and noted
that he was buried near the tomb of John of Gaunt in
the choir of the cathedral. A monument was erected to
his memory, but both grave and monument were con
sumed in the great fire of 1666.

CHAPTER VI
ANTHONY VAN DYCK made his will on his
/j^ deathbed on the 4th of December 1641. His
property at Antwerp, which had been left in the
hands of his sister, Susanna, was left to her with a con
dition that she should make provision from it for his
illegitimate daughter, Maria Theresia, evidently born in
Antwerp, and for his sister Isabella ; after the decease of
all these parties he made his lawful daughter, then only
three days old, his heir. The rest of his estate, including
the debts owing to him by the King of England, he left
to his wife and daughter in England. Failing all these
parties, the property was to be divided among the chil
dren of his sister Catherina, wife of Adriaen Diercx, at
Antwerp. No time was lost in proving the will, which
was effected four days after the painter's death, but actual
settlement of the estate does not appear to have taken
place till 1663, if then. Lady Van Dyck, a young
widow with a considerable fortune, was much courted,
and gave her hand, as a second husband, to Sir Richard
Pryse of Gogerddan, in Montgomeryshire, a Welsh
baronet. She only survived her first husband for upwards
of four years, and after her death in 1645, her relative,
Patrick Ruthven, addressed a petition to Parliament on
k 73

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
behalf of Van Dyck's infant child. From this petition it
appears that Van Dyck's studio at Blackfriars had been
raided by his assistants and servants, his collection of
pictures and works of art made away with, and the greater
part smuggled over to the Continent by one Richard
Andrew. Justiniana, the infant daughter of Van Dyck, was
married in 1653, when only twelve years old, to Sir John
Stepney of Prendergast in Pembrokeshire. She had been
baptized as a Protestant, as already stated, on the day of
her father's death, and for this reason her aunt Susanna,
the bdguine, in her will made at Antwerp in 1649, pro
vided for her niece on condition of her coming to Ant
werp and changing her religion. Her uncle, Theodorus,
the priest, came to England to fetch his niece in 1654,
but found her already married. Lady Stepney took the
required step in 16 60, when she came to Antwerp and was
received into the Roman Church, being baptized and
married afresh. In 1 666 she inherited, on shares with her
half-sister Maria Theresia, the property left by her father
in Belgium. Two of her daughters became abbesses in
a convent at Brussels, and lived to a great age. Lady
Stepney seems to have inherited herself some skill in
painting. Her son succeeded to the baronetcy, which
became extinct in 1725, the lineage of Van Dyck then
being divided between the families of Gulston and
Cowell, the latter being represented at the present day
by Miss Katherine Meriel Gowell-Stepney.
After the restoration of the monarchy in England, a
74

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
petition to the Crown was presented by Justiniana, Lady
Stepney, who was granted an annual pension of two
hundred pounds. This pension was, however, stopped,
probably on account of Lady Stepney's change of religion,
and further petitions were addressed by her to the king,
stating that ' the Estate of her Father had been wrong
fully kept from her and Imbezled by those with whom
the same was Intrusted in time of the late war.' These
petitions seem to have been successful after 1670, when
the pension was again paid. Lady Stepney meanwhile
took a second husband, one Martin de Carbonell, and as
late as 1703 her heirs were still attempting to recover
debts due to the estate of Sir Anthony Van Dyck. The
painter's other daughter, Maria Theresia, married Gabriel
Esserts, Drossart of Bouchout, and dying in 1697, left
descendants to represent the painter at Lierre in Belgium.
The famous banker and picture collector, Eberhard
Jabach of Cologne, who knew Van Dyck well, has left
valuable notes of his method of work. From an inscrip
tion on the back of a portrait of Thomas Parr, who died
in London in 1635 at the reputed age of one hundred
and forty-eight years, it appears that Jabach said Van
Dyck painted the portrait in his London house. The
painter told him that in early life, when working for his
livelihood (poursa cuisine), he studied the art of painting
quickly and on several portraits at once. By carefully
regulating the time and duration of each sitting he was
able to keep a great number of paintings in hand, and
complete an almost incredible amount of work. He
75

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
drew quickly, and the accessories were sketched on paper
and handed over to his pupils and assistants to work up in
the portraits. All this method he learned in the atelier
of Rubens at Antwerp. In England, however, the de
mands of fashion led him to leave more and more of the
work to his pupils. The series of formulas and conven
tions in their hands became monotonous, and the artistic
value of the portraits correspondingly less. This can be
traced, for instance, in the hands, which were originally
drawn by VanDyck with great care and elegance, not with
out certain mannerisms, but all of which when imitated
by his assistants became exaggerated and displeasing.
Between April 1632 and December 1641 Van Dyck
spent little more than six and a half years in London.
It is obvious that of the immense number of portraits attri
buted to Van Dyck in this country, only a small fraction
can be attributed to the hand of the painter himself.
He had a number of capable assistants, Jean de Reyn of
Dunkirk, David Beck, afterwards painter to the Queen of
Sweden, Jan Baptist Gaspars, Remigius van Leemput,
William Dobson, James Gandy, and, as it would appear,
Peter Lely during the last year of Van Dyck's life. Copies
and replicas were issued from the studio under Van Dyck's
own supervision. From a correspondence between
Eleanor Wortley, Countess of Sussex, to Ralph Verney, it
appears that the lady sat rather unwillingly to Van Dyck,
whose portrait of herself she criticises as being too fat, and
having more jewels than she really possessed. It was in a
blue gown with pearl buttons and cost ^50, and a copy
76

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
was made at the time in the painter's studio at a cost of £ 8.
During the interregnum there was ample time for copy
ing Van Dyck's pictures both in London and at Antwerp,
whither most of his pictures had been smuggled away.
Remigius van Leemput and Henry Stone seem to have
been the most employed as copyists. Others, such as
John Weesop, are known to tradition as having been able
to copy paintings by Van Dyck in a quite indistinguish
able manner. The Lanier family were capable of doing
the same, as were Van Dyck's own friends and contem
poraries, George Geldorp, Jan van Belcamp, and Adriaen
Hanneman. The greatest care must therefore be exer
cised in accepting every painting attributed to Van
Dyck in England as entirely by his own hand, or even the
joint work of himself and his pupils. William Dobson,
the best known of these, succeeded Van Dyck as court-
painter to Charles I., and imitated quite successfully, but
without servile copying, the manner of his master. David
Beck carried his experiences of the Van Dyck School away
to Stockholm ; there he executed some good portraits of
the Swedish royal family and nobility, good but rather
frigid exercises in the Van Dyck formulas, as illustrated
by the full-length portrait of Count Oxenstiern, formerly
in the collection of Sir William Abdy. Jean de Reyn
returned to Dunkirk, where he enjoyed considerable local
reputation. From Edward Norgate, Sir Theodore May erne, and
others, various notes have been handed down of Van
Dyck's methods in painting and his choice of colours and
77

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
pigments, in which he exercised great care, with conspicu
ous success as to the durability of his portraits. From
these notes it appears that Van Dyck used very little oil
with his colours, and preferred a quickly drying surface
in the manner of tempera. Sometimes the painting is very
slight, and details worked up with drawing strokes. At
all times his paintings had a cool and silvery tone, which
has often been obscured and falsified by the over-applica
tion of yellow varnishes. It was probably the dryness of
surface between the painting and the varnish which has
caused his pictures to suffer so much from cold and damp
in churches. The consummate skill shown in the draw
ing, the lack of effort, the effect of the drawing strokes,
and the silvery tone of the portraits were no doubt what
appeared so much in Van Dyck's work to Thomas Gains
borough, always a passionate admirer of his great pre
decessor. The rules and formulas of the Van Dyck studio
were carefully preserved and transmitted to his successors,
and their influence can be traced up to the present day.
Until the arrival of the Dutch element in painting under
William III. and the rise of the English school under
Hogarth, the Van Dyck tradition reigned supreme. It
was revived again by Sir Joshua Reynolds, artistically a
lineal descendant of Van Dyck, and by Gainsborough.
In the nineteenth century the influence of Van Dyck was
submerged by that of the more modern French schools,
but in more recent years this influence has shown a ten
dency to reassert itself. In Paris, greatly through the
influence of Largilliere, the academical schools of the
78

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were pro
foundly influenced by the traditions of Rubens and Van
Dyck. Charles le Brun,the ruler of the French Academy,
even advised Hyacinthe Rigaud, when young, not to go to
Italy, but to stay at home and study nature and Van Dyck.
It may be impossible to place Van Dyck on the same level
with his great masters Titian and Rubens,with the painter
with whom in temperament he has most in common,
Raphael, or with his great contemporaries, Velazquez,
Hals, and Rembrandt. Few painters, however, have
exercised so wide-reaching and so lasting an influence as
Van Dyck, and this alone would entitle him to a place
among the immortals in the history of the Fine Arts.
Van Dyck, in fact, left a lasting influence in each of the
three great cities in which he spent his life. His influence
in London on British art has already been indicated. At
Genoa he left a thriving school of imitators, whose work
has in some cases been unduly attributed to Van Dyck.
At Antwerp he was the model for a whole school of
portrait-painters, skilled artists like Thomas Willeborts,
Pieter Tyssen, Franchoys,andTheodor Boeyermans, many
of whose portraits very nearly approach the excellence of
Van Dyck, but who must be regarded as imitators rather
than as pupils. The author of a manuscript life of Van
Dyck, preserved in the Louvre, believed to be one Francis
Mols of Antwerp, writing within a century of the painter's
death, alludes to the great number of spurious paintings
attributed to Van Dyck already existing, and distinguishes
three classes of copies: those made in the painter's studio by
79

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
his best assistants and approved by him, those made there
by his pupils as mere practice exercises, and those which
were made after his death by miscellaneous artists without
any authority. At Antwerp and Genoa therefore, as in
England, great care should be exercised in attributing a
portrait for certainty to the hand of Van Dyck, since his
memory and reputation have suffered most unjustly by
the malpractices of ignorance and dishonesty.
The same difficulty must be met in dealing with the
drawings attributed to Van Dyck. He was a rapid and
brilliant sketcher,as is shown by the famous Sketch-Book
at Chatsworth, which has already been mentioned. His
method in the book of pen drawings washed in sepia,
something in the style of Guercino, is one which lends
itself to imitation, and drawings by Van Dyck occur in
facsimile repetitions, which are very disconcerting. The
quality of his completed historical paintings does not do
justice to the fertility of his invention, for many drawings
of sacred history and mythology, which may be accepted
as genuine, exist, and seem to indicate a fecundity of
imagination, the employment of which required a more
vigorous creative energy than Van Dyck possessed, as
compared with Rubens. Van Dyck has left some inter
esting studies in landscape, though within a much narrower
horizon of observation than Rubens. A considerable
number of portrait studies on bluish-grey paper have
been preserved, which may for the most part be assumed
to be the notes made by him in person, which were after
wards worked up by his assistants ; but these drawings all
80

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
require careful expert examination to prove that they are
the actual work of the master himself.
A number of portrait-drawings exist, which were exe
cuted for a work which has added justly to the greatness
of Van Dyck's reputation. Among the greatest achieve
ments of Rubens was his establishment under his own
superintendence of a special school of engravers, mainly
employed in reproducing his designs. In this school were
trained some of the great masters of the engraver's art,
Lucas Vorsterman, Paulus Pontius, the brothers Scliertius
and Boetius van Bolswert, the De Jodes, and other artists
who raised engraving to a position in the front rank of the
arts at Antwerp. Van Dyck was naturally familiar with
this school, and acquainted with all the engravers. Where
as, however, they were all reproductive artists, Van Dyck
himself tried his hand at the original work of a painter-
etcher. In the practice of this delightful art Van Dyck
was a pioneer north of the Alps. Rembrandt, his junior
in age by seven years, although working as a painter-
etcher at the same time as Van Dyck, did not produce any
of his great works in etching till after Van Dyck's death.
It is not likely that Van Dyck was acquainted with the not
very successful attempts of Albrecht Diirer in this art, or
with the then unknown dry-points of the so-called Master
of the House bookr On the other hand, he was probably
acquainted with the etchings of the Carracci and of Par-
megiano, and certainly with those of Jacques Callot, the
painter-etcher from Lorraine. The two earliest examples
of Van Dyck's etching are from paintings by Titian,
8 1

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
apparently in the collection of Lucas van Uffel at Genoa.
At all events, after Van Dyck's return to Antwerp he
seems to have been associated with Pontius and the Bols-
werts, and especially with Lucas Vorsterman, after that
engraver's returnfrom England, in an enterprise of peculiar
interest. This venture was a series of engravings from portraits
painted or drawn by Van Dyck, on the lines of similar
portrait -series published at Antwerp during the latter
part of the sixteenth century. It is possible that the scheme
may have been due to the Antwerp publisher, Martin van
den Enden, rather than to the painter himself. The scheme
of this Iconographie comprised three series of engraved
portraits, all after Van Dyck, the first containing princes
and distinguished military commanders, the second, states
men and men of learning, the third, artists and amateurs
of art. Eighty plates were issued in the first edition, fifty-
two of which belonged to the third class. The process of
publication appears to have been as follows : a sketch in
black chalk was made by Van Dyck himself, and this was
handed over to a skilled assistant, highly trained in this
business, who worked up the sketch into a complete paint
ing in grisaille, indicating all the values necessary to guide
the engraver. From these grisaille drawings the engraving
was ultimately made. A great number of the grisaille
drawings exist, usually attributed to the hand of Van Dyck
himself. It was indeed the tradition of the Rubens school
to commence a work by such studies en camaieu, and the
assistants in the studio were called upon to produce them.
82

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Van Dyck had done this himself in earlier years, and so
was a practised hand. Most of these grisaille portraits
are admirably executed, but do not surpass the skill which
might be expected of a practitioner trained in the en
graving school of Rubens. If not unworthy of Van Dyck's
name, there is no obvious necessity for attributing them
to him, while many of them must have been executed at
Antwerp during Van Dyck's absence in England.
Van Dyck was, however, led to take a share in the en
graver's work himself, and left a series of original etched
portraits,which are among the most highly prized treasures
of the engraver's art. These etchings stand alone for their
marvellous delicacy and dexterity of execution. Van Dyck
seems to have executed his etchings, as models and
groundwork for the completed engravings, and in no work
of his, painting or otherwise, does he attain so supreme a
height as an original artist. The words of Mr. Philip G.
Hamerton, written nearly fifty years ago, sum up the
position of Van Dyck in the estimation of connoisseurs of
etching: 'His aims were few, his choice of means instinc
tively wise and right, his command of them absolute, his
success complete' {Etching and Etchers, 1868). The
portrait of himself, as left by him with only the head com
pleted, and the portrait of Snyders are specially remarkable
for refined expression as well as technical skill.
After the death of Van Dyck, the eighty plates com
pleted passed into the hands of another Antwerp pub
lisher, Gillis Hendricx, who also acquired the fifteen
plates etched by Van Dyck himself. Some of these etched
83

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
plates were entrusted to Pontius and Vorsterman and com
pleted with the burin, as was probably Van Dyck's own
intention, although thereby the delicacy of Van Dyck's
work was obliterated and destroyed. They were then
added to the series, with six more, which brought the series
up to one hundred. A new edition was issued in 1645,
with Van Dyck's head as a frontispiece, which from its title
and the number of its plates is usually spoken of as the
Centum Icones of Van Dyck. Later editions were pub
lished with additional plates, which have no bearing on
the painter's life.
Allusion has already been made to the fact that
Anthony Van Dyck was born in the same year as
Velazquez, but even those who would refuse to give the
Flemish painter equal rank with the Spanish must admit
that the name of Van Dyck strikes a note in manya human
heart which would remain silent at the name of Velaz
quez. At no time did Van Dyck succeed in his great
ambition of outrivalling and eclipsing his great master,
Rubens, but it is possible, if not an obvious fact, that the
spectator will pass with relief and comfort, say at the
Munich Gallery, from a room dedicated to the perplexing
and rather overwhelming creations of Rubens to the
majestic certainty and repose of Van Dyck. In pure
technical skill and brilliancy of execution Van Dyck may
not rank so high, in a painter's estimation,as his great con
temporary, Frans Hals, but the high estimation in which
Hals himself held Van Dyck as a painter is founded on a
well-attested tradition. As a path-finder, a thinker, and
84

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
investigator of problems of light, Van Dyck falls far short of
another great contemporary, Rembrandt ; but even here,
when studying Rembrandt's career as a fashionable por
trait-painter in early life at Amsterdam, one is from time
to time reminded of Van Dyck. Why is it, then, that while
depending so much upon an accumulation of formulas of
pose, light, expression, leading to careless mannerisms in
details like the hands, or the curtained background, Van
Dyck should have obtained and secured so great a reputa
tion? The answer can only be, that it was due to a genius,
inborn and cultivated at the earliest possible age, trained
in an admirable school, deliberately inured to industry ; a
genius capable of seeing at a glance what was best and most
advantageous, seizing the moment and turning it to the
best advantage ; a genius, however, which from the very
force of its intensity was destined inevitably to burn itself
out at an early age. Titian might live and work to a great
and glorious old age, Rubens might have done the same,
but there could have been no old age for Van Dyck, any
more than there could have been for Raphael. Forty years
of life and an imperishable achievement — ; those whom
the Gods love die young !
Anthony Van Dyck was unconsciously one of the
makers of history. Antwerp, Genoa, London, all testify
to this. At Antwerp he illustrated the closing scenes in
the great world-drama of Spanish rule in the Netherlands.
The rise of the House of Orange at the expense of Spain
was consummated by the marriage of the boy William II.
with the child-daughter of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria,
85

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
and this event was commemorated by the last painting of
importance executed by Van Dyck. Ferdinand, the Car
dinal-Infant of Spain,whose joyous entry into Brussels had
been attended by Van Dyck, was the last of the Spanish
royal family to govern theNetherlands,as his brother,King
Philip IV., was the last of the Hapsburgs to really govern
Spain. Genoa owes much of its great tradition to the por
traits of its governing aristocracy, which owed their crea
tion to Van Dyck's magic brush. England reads in Van
Dyck's portraits the grim forebodings of the death-struggle
between King and Parliament, which the painter did not
live to see. Charles and Henrietta Maria are stamped on
history by Van Dyck's portraits. Strafford and Laud live
for posterity through the same agency. It is curious to
note that Van Dyck's residence synchronised so often with
the closing days of peace and prosperity in the country
where he happened to be. The Netherlands were soon to
be the cockpit of Europe; Genoa had a hard fight to main
tain its independence as a Republic. Venice was about
to enter upon the last of her great struggles with the
Turkf or supremacy in the East. Even Mantua's deserted
court was soon to be plunged into a welter of conflict and
desolation ; while England trembled on the brink of the
greatest revolution in its history. Looking back on the
stirring events of the seventeenth century, posterity has
probably read too much into the fateful look with which
so many of Van Dyck's portraits seem inspired. There is
a shadow about every throne, no matter how brilliant its
surroundings, a melancholy about all the glamour of a
86

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
court. High-bred restraint breeds an atmosphere of dis
dain, the consciousness of a gulf, which cannot be bridged,
between appearance and reality. Van Dyck's English
sitters are no mere posers, no play-actors ; they feel their
roles in life ; and in looking on them one can understand
why so many English gentlemen rode to death at Naseby
or Marston Moor with the same excitement and insou
ciance as a modern English sportsman rides to hounds.
With women Van Dyck, like most great portrait-
painters, was less successful. Fashion is a cruel tyrant and
levels its victims too often to the same degree of insipidity.
A woman's beauty is the hardest thing to depict, and few
of Van Dyck's sitterswould probably come up to a modern
photographic standard. Character is wanting in the por
traits, mainly because it was wanting in the originals. It
is better for court ladies not to be clever, and Lucy Percy,
Countess of Carlisle, whose portrait was painted more than
once by Van Dyck, is an illustration of the danger caused
by a clever woman. One must not therefore blame Van
Dyck, if his portraits of English women seem to lack
characterand vitality. If fashion be foolish, and the votaries
of fashion more foolish still, the twentieth century cannot
afford to throw any stone at the seventeenth.
Posterity therefore owes a great debt to Sir Anthony
Van Dyck, which is fully justified by the increasing value
attached to his best works. The highest price ever paid
for a painted portrait has been that paid for the great por
trait of Elena Grimaldi, Contessa Cattaneo, now in Mr.
Widener's collection at New York. England, which owes
87

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
so much to this painter's skill, might well remember that
the painter's body once reposed beneath the roof of St.
Paul's Cathedral, and that his ashes are mingled with its
soil, together with those of John of Gaunt and other
national heroes. Should it not be a reproach that of this
event no record has as yet been placed in the great
cathedral, which stands over the last resting-place of
Anthony Van Dyck ?

'•*•¦ ANTHONY VAN DYCK
TWENTY-FIVE PLATES IN COLOUR, SELECTED
AND EXECUTED UNDER THE SUPERVISION
OF THE MEDICI SOCIETY

M

NOTE
In making a selection of twenty-five plates in colour to illus
trate the work of Anthony Van Dyck, it has been thought
better to select paintings which serve to illustrate the many-
sidedness of the painter's career, rather than to rely on paintings
which are already well known and have attained world-wide
popularity. Special thanks are therefore due to those private
owners who have kindly allowed special reproductions to be
made of the paintings in their possession.
The Publishers specially desire to acknowledge their obli
gations to
Duke of Devonshire
' Arthur Goodwin,' Chatsworth.
' Lord Falkland,' Devonshire House, London.
Duke of Portland
' Duke of Newcastle,' Welbeck Abbey.
Duke of Westminster
' Virgin, Child, and St. Catherine,' Grosvenor House, London.
' Vandyke with a Sunflower,' Grosvenor House, London.
Lady Wantage
' Queen Henrietta Maria.'
Duke of Newcastle
' Rinaldo and Armida,' Clumber.
• Sir William Killigrew,' Clumber.
Earl Fitzwilliam
1 Strafford and his Secretary,' Wentworth Woodhouse.
Lieut.-Col. Sir G. L. Holford, K.C.V.O., CLE.
4 Marchesa Balbi,' Dorchester House, London.
Messrs. Knoedler
' Lord and Lady Derby,' Bond Street, W.

PORTRAIT OF ANTHONY VAN
DYCK, AS A BOY
ROYAL ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, VIENNA
THERE are few painters with whose personal ap
pearance posterity is so familiar as Anthony Van
Dyck. His own self was always a favourite ob-
jetc of study, so that an interesting series of iconographic
studies is presented by Van Dyck's portraits of himself.
In this he resembled his great contemporary, Rembrandt.
The earliest portrait of Van Dyck must be the bust por
trait in the Academy of Fine Arts at Vienna. The young
painter has depicted himself almost in profile to the right,
turning his head to look at the spectator with a keen,
roguish expression. Traces of a sensitive, passionate nature
.can be seen in the full, rather sensual lips, the refined, well-
shaped nose, and the large eye-sockets. The auburn hair
falls in loose, but apparently carefully trained, locks over
his ears, temples and forehead. The physiognomy of an
artist is at once apparent.
Van Dyck used himself as a model in several of his
early paintings. Perhaps the most striking instance is
the Dcedalus and Icarus, belonging to Earl Spencer at
Althorp, in which the young Icarus, with the beautiful
N

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
nude torso of adolescent youth, clearly gives the likeness
of the young Van Dyck. The same type appears again in
the St. Sebastian paintings of this early period, such as
the two different renderings of the subject in the Picture
Gallery at Munich. It is again repeated in the painting
of Paris as a Shepherd 'in the Wallace Collection, in that
of the Piping Shepherd at Madrid, and is evident in the
portrait of Van Dyck in the Town Gallery at Strassburg.
All of these portraits must have been painted before his
first visit to Italy. During the period of his residence in
Italy, up to the time of his return to Antwerp, Van Dyck
painted several portraits of himself, all conforming to the
same type, slightly older and more conscious, more ela
borately posed, and not without a graceful affectation.
Numerous versions of these portraits exist. One of the
best, a bust showing the right hand only, is the property
of the Trustees of the National Gallery, by whom it has
been deposited in the National Portrait Gallery. In this
portrait the painter wears a ring on the little finger of the
right hand, and the same portrait on a larger scale, to the
knees, with the same accessories, is in the collection of the
Duke of Grafton. A somewhat similar portrait, but in a
different attitude showing both hands, is in the Hermitage
at Petersburg. Another version, seen to the waist only
with one hand, shows the painter in a silk cloak and wear
ing the heavy gold chain which is stated to have been
given to him by Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua.
In all these portraits Van Dyck appears with smooth
cheeks and the appearance of youth.

II
THE HOLY FAMILY
IMPERIAL GALLERY, VIENNA
THIS is one of the earliest renderings of the Holy
Family by Anthony Van Dyck, and has a vivacity
of its own, which is very characteristic of the
painter. The Virgin, a comely maiden, in the manner of
Raphael, is clothed in a scarlet robe, and very dark blue
mantle spread over her knee. The infant Christ sits on
her lap, his legs partially covered by a white cloth. Rest
ing his left hand on the Virgin Mother, he lifts the right
hand extended to touch the face of St. Joseph, who is
standing on the left, and seems to be protesting against the
familiarity. The fair, tously-haired child was a favourite
model of Van Dyck's.
St. Joseph is evidently drawn, if not from Rubens him
self, from a model, whose head reappears in a great many
early paintings by Van Dyck, in the Samson and Delila
at Vienna, the Brazen Serpent at Madrid, the Pentecost
at Berlin, and elsewhere. This Holy Family at Vienna
shows much of the Rubens influence, but is already suf
fused with the warmth and passion of the south, of Titian
and Raphael. It contains, moreover, some of the favourite

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
formulas adopted by Van Dyck, notably the white cloth,
reflecting light about the picture, and enhancing the
warm ruddy flesh of the infant Christ.
The picture was formerly in the collection of the
Emperor Charles VI. early in the eighteenth century.

Ill
PORTRAIT-GROUP OF AN ARTIST
WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILD
THE HERMITAGE, PETERSBURG
AMONG the paintings of Van Dyck's youth at Ant-
J^\^ werp are several family-groups, for the most part
of his friends and acquaintances. The family-group
was not an invention of Van Dyck, but rather of Cornells
de Vos, and Van Dyck's grouping and early handling is
so much akin to those of De Vos, that it is difficult to be
quite certain to which painter certain groups should be
assigned. The group from Petersburg is clearly the
work of Van Dyck, and reveals his peculiar temperament,
or sensitiveness, which is somewhat lacking in the more
pedestrian works of his elder contemporary and rival.
The group of husband, wife and child has for long passed
as the portraits of Frans Snyders, the animal painter and
intimate friend of Van Dyck, with his wife and child,
but it obviously does not represent Snyders, whose face
is well known in more than one admirable portrayal by
Van Dyck. It may possibly represent Jan Wildens, the
landscape-painter, one of Rubens's most valued assistants,

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
and his family, but the resemblance between the man in
the Petersburg group and the portraits of Wildens at
Vienna and Cassel is far from being convincing. In any
circumstances, it represents one of Van Dyck's immediate
comrades before he left for Italy.
The group shows rather more skilful composition
than is usual with Van Dyck, and with slight modifica
tions might easily be converted into a Holy Family. The
father, auburn-haired, stands behind, leaning his right arm
on a chair, the hand being exceptionally well studied and
painted in this picture. The mother, with homely face
and apple cheeks, sits in an arm-chair with her child on
her knees. She is dressed in the stiff, though not unbecom
ing black dress of the period, with gold-embroidered
stomacher and the heavy wheel-ruff which was worn by
the well-to-do bourgeoisie. Her hair is drawn back tight
from the forehead over the head, and fastened by a small,
gold-embroidered cap at the back of the head.
The child is one of Van Dyck's most delightful crea
tions, unrivalled even by such a child as Frans Hals could
paint. A chubby Flemish infant, the little girl sits on her
mother's knee, clad in a dull gold and grey striped jacket, a
green skirt trimmed with gold, white pinafore, wide cambric
ruff with lace edge, and a cap of similar material. Round
her neck is a necklace of coral beads, and in her hands
she holds a doll dressed in a similarly elaborate fashion.
The child looks up towards her father, as if desirous of
attracting his attention. Van Dyck's children are always
delightful, but he never excelled those of his earliest days,

ARTIST WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILD
the child with its mother in the portrait belonging to Earl
Brownlow at Ashridge, or the two children in the group
belonging to Sir Frederick L. Cook at Richmond. The
lady's costume marks the date, as there is a whole series of
portraits of women painted by Van Dyck in the same
fashion of dress. This picture belonged in 1770 to M.
La Live de Jully in Paris, when it was bought for Mme.
Groenbloedt of Brussels, and immediately resold to the
Empress Catherine of Russia. It has always enjoyed high
repute, and was lent by the Emperor of Russia to the
Brussels International Exhibition of 19 10. It has been
engraved more than once, and has established itself among
the most popular works of the painter.

IV
THE REDEEMER WITH THE FOUR
PENITENT SINNERS
AUGSBURG GALLERY
THE fervid youth of Anthony Van Dyck finds a vent
in certain paintings, for the most part of sacred
subjects, in which the influence of Rubens and
Titian is shown blended, like the joining of two mighty
river streams into one splendid current. It is not difficult
to follow Van Dyck through the earlier stages of his
career. As a boy he attracts notice by his portrait-studies
of heads, mostly models from the Rubens School, if not
actual studies of his friends and relatives. These model-
studies will be found utilised in many of his early paint
ings, and are obviously based on the Rubens teaching.
Van Dyck then sets to work to study the nude, and here,
though starting on the lines of Rubens, he deviates from
them, in that he shows little liking for the aspect of the
nude which appealed so much to Rubens, the live, pal
pitating vitality of the flesh, and its reality. Van Dyck
at quite an early age shows a preference for the Italian
treatment of the nude in masses of light and form, ideal-

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
ised rather than realised, the nude of Titian and Cor
reggio. Van Dyck, moreover, shows an innate shrinking
from the exuberant nudity of the Flemish female form,
in which Rubens took an almost excessive interest. His
early nudes are, for the most part, studies of muscular
torsos and limbs from models, and when he tackles a
subject like Jupiter and Antiope, he seems to be in some
way out of his element, rather like Sir Joshua Reynolds
in later days. The nude is carefully studied, often bril
liantly executed, but seldom seems to be felt and under
stood as it was by Rubens and Titian.
With the help of these studies Van Dyck built up a
series of paintings, which are admirable examples of the
painter's art, but would hardly perhaps have won for Van
Dyck a place in the front rank. The types are all bor
rowed from Rubens, and in most cases the compositions
as well. The type of Jesus Christ, also, as the Redeemer
is Titian's type, translated into Flemish by Rubens, and
transcribed by Van Dyck. It is the sentiment, passionate
or religious, which Van Dyck is able to infuse into his
early paintings, which makes even what he borrows so
entirely his own.
It seems to have been during his early days at Genoa
that he executed most of his paintings of this class.
Motives are to be found, borrowed from his Italian sketch
book, which can hardly be dated before his Italian journey.
The setting is Titianesque and Italian, the colour often
rich and golden, deeper and warmer than the Rubens
tradition at Antwerp. Of these paintings, that of the

REDEEMER WITH FOUR PENITENT SINNERS
Redeemer with the Four Penitent Sinners in the Augs
burg Gallery is a good and little-known example. Here
the type of Christ is that of Titian's * Christo della
Moneta,' seen through Rubens spectacles ; while the
types of the four sinners, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Peter,
the Repentant Thief, and the Prodigal Son, are easily
recognisable among Van Dyck's early models. There is
a simplicity of construction about this picture, which
shows it to be an early work, preceding some time in date
the more highly elaborated versions of a similar subject,
the Virgin and Child with the Three Penitents in the
Kaiser-Friedrich Museum and the Louvre, in which the
principal motive is directly borrowed from Titian.

V
PORTRAIT OF
THE MARCHESA BALBI
LIEUT.-COL. SIR GEORGE L. HOLFORD, K.C.V.O.,
DORCHESTER HOUSE, LONDON
VAN DYCK at Genoa was one of the landmarks in
the history of art. The painter was fortunate in
the moment of his arrival. Genoa was a proud
city, governed by an oligarchy of great reigning families.
As the chief seaport of the Mediterranean Genoa was a
formidable rival to Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic.
Genoa still retained her hard-won independence, and, like
Venice, the city offered a more liberal field for welcoming
the foreigner to come and reside and trade within her
borders. The visit of Rubens had left a state of pleasur
able excitement among local artists, and the arrival of his
most brilliant pupil and assistant, Anthony Van Dyck,
was an event of capital importance. Van Dyck soon won
his way by his art and his engaging personality into the
great palaces of the Genoese aristocracy. They vied
among themselves in securing paintings by Van Dyck,
and hardly any family of importance failed to treasure

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
one or more portraits of its own members among its family
heirlooms. Up to the time when the Republic lost its
independence, the Genoese enjoyed great wealth and pros
perity. The French invasion of Italy caused many of the
great families to close their palaces and seal up their pos
sessions. Among the leading families at Genoa is that of Balbi.
Originally settlers from Venice, the family exists still in
more than one branch. The Balbi were among those who
shut up their palaces, but pressure of circumstances com
pelled them to contemplate the possibility of parting with
some of their art-treasures, and a breach was made in the
ramparts in 1802 by the well-known dealer, Mr. Buch
anan. By degrees some of the famous paintings by Van
Dyck began to find their way to France and England.
At a later date Baron J. B. Heath, then British Consul at
Genoa, was able to procure the splendid portrait of a
Marchesa Balbi, which was subsequently purchased by
the late Mr. Robert Stayner Holford, since when it has
been at Dorchester House, Park Lane.
An aristocracy such as has existed at Genoa must
tend to an inbreeding which results in a creation of types.
For this reason the great ladies of Genoa, as depicted by
Van Dyck, seem to conform to one type, and to suggest
a want of discernment on the part of the painter. The
same may, however, be said of Van Dyck's portraits of
the ladies of the English court, although the atmosphere
of the English court was more genial and airy than the
somewhat oppressive languor of the great Genoese palaces.

PORTRAIT OF THE MARCHESA BALBI
Gazing on the series of the Genoese ladies, whom
Van Dyck has made immortal, Paola Adorno, Elena
Grimaldi, Geronima Bignole-Sala, Caterina Durazzo,
Polissena Spinola, one feels that the lives of these rather
listless dames in their rich brocades and silks, their
wonderful gold-embroidered ruffs, must have been a weary
one, as the life of many a great Italian lady may be at the
present day.
It is pleasant to think what a ray of light the brilliant
young Flemish painter must have brought into these
palaces, and to imagine how some of those apparently dis
dainful ladies may have felt a fluttering of the heart while
posing before the auburn-haired young artist. In the
portrait here reproduced, that of one of the great ladies
of the Balbi family, the light seems to have been kindled.
As the lady sits in her great chair, almost overwhelmed
with her heavy dark-green velvet robe, and the glory of
her gold-embroidered sleeves, she smiles pensively, with
an expression which indicates that here at least is to be
found a human heart.
Seldom can it happen to a young painter to have such
an opportunity as did Van Dyck. Even more seldom,
perhaps, would it be possible to find a painter, who had
but lately passed his twentieth year, who could rise to the
occasion. Posterity has been unanimous in its recog
nition of Van Dyck's triumph at Genoa. Had he painted
nothing but this series of portraits, he would still have found
his place among the immortals.

VI
PORTRAITS OF THREE
CHILDREN OF THE BALBI FAMILY
THE LORD LUCAS, NATIONAL GALLERY
VAN DYCK carried with him to Genoa his love of
painting children, and it is interesting to see how
readily he adapted himself to his changed cir
cumstances. The chubby, flowery little children of the
Flemish race give place to a sense of refined, aristocratic
little gentlemen, stiff and haughty in their teens, the re
sult of generations of aristocratic inbreeding. We now
feel that if these children were turned loose on the quays
at Antwerp, they could be as jolly and insouciants as a
young Fleming ; but that on the marble staircases and in
the salons of the Genoese palaces they are pining for want
of air and outlet of animal spirits. There is something
pathetic in the Group of the Three Durazzo Children in
the Durazzo Palace at Genoa, a kind of foreshadowing
of the ' Three Children of Charles I.' The Boy in White
in the same palace poses with as much dignity as a Stuart
or a Villiers might in London, The most famous of these
groups of children, perhaps of any such group, is the
painting of the Three Children of the Balbi Family, which

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
is now on loan from Lord Lucas to the National Gallery.
It is the high- water mark of childish hauteur-, not even a
Hapsburg could be so naively conscious of his own im
portance as the eldest boy, who stands in a true Van Dyck
attitude on the steps of his father's palace. It is not only
the rich clothes, the crimson hose and jerkin, the golden
waistcoat and breeches, the high black velvet hat which
give this air, but there is something in the look of the
boy himself, who feels evidently that the destiny of the
family will be in his hands. On the steps stand the two
younger brothers, the elder in black velvet with gold fac
ings, heavy fair hair brushed unwillingly over an ample
forehead, his arm akimbo on his hip, evidently destined
to be the soldier member of the family. By him stands
the youngest boy, not yet out of the frocks, in which even
boys were clad in their early years. He is evidently the
family pickle, and holds a tame bird, rather unkindly
grasped, in his right hand. His rich pink velvet frock
is trimmed with gold braid, and the combination of the
gold in the three dresses fills the picture with scintillat
ing light. As a contrast to the rich brilliance of the
costumes, Van Dyck has introduced a black curtain over
head, while two black Cornish choughs with red legs are
perched on the steps in the lower corner of the picture.
These, with the black velvet hat in the eldest boy's hand,
unite to harmonise and complete the scheme of colour in
a very unusual way. This famous picture belonged to the
Earlsof Kent, and came, with other paintings by VanDyck,
by inheritance to their last descendant, Baroness Lucas,

THREE CHILDREN OF THE BALBI FAMILY
who married Earl Cowper. They were then removed from
Wrest Park to Panshanger, where the series of full-length
portraits ornamented the great dining-room. On the
death of the late and last Earl Cowper, the pictures became
the property of his nephew, Lord Lucas, by whom they
have been deposited on loan in the National Gallery.

VII
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST.
CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER, GROSVENOR HOUSE, LONDON
THIS painting is one of the most attractive of Van
Dyck's renderings of the Holy Family and similar
compositions. In the early days of the Flemish
school of painting the laws of divine portraiture were more
rigid, and the likeness of the Virgin Mary was governed
by a series of recognised types, the divinity and holiness
of the subject being considered of greater importance than
the humanity. Under the influence of the Italian school
these restrictions were gradually broken down, and the
rankly human model supplanted the conventional types
of mediaeval days. Rubens was a powerful agent in this
change, and where Rubens went, Van Dyck was sure to
follow. During his student-days, and especially during
his sojourn in Italy, Van Dyck studied a series of types of
womanhood from Italian life, which formed a treasure-
house on which he drew after his return to Antwerp. Van
Dyck's Madonnas or female saints are not Flemish, but
Italian in type. They are a blend of the exuberant vitality

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
of Rubens with the queenly grace of Titian, tempered
sometimes by the sweetness of Correggio or the suavity
of Raphael. This side of Van Dyck's art has met with unmerited
neglect. It was highly valued in his day, and certain
paintings of this class are known by several contemporary
replicas and innumerable copies of later dates. The paint
ing here reproduced was evidently executed under the
influence of Correggio. It is very probable that Van
Dyck may have visited Parma on his journey through
North Italy in the train of the Countess of Arundel. The
picture appears to be identical with one which Van Dyck
painted for the Church of Recollets at Antwerp. It was
engraved several times ; by Bolswert and Snyers, by Van
Schuppen,and by Abraham Blooteling, besides other later
copies from these engravings. This indicates the popu
larity of the picture. The picture in question came into
the possession of Welbore Agar Ellis, afterwards Lord
Mendip, and eventually into that of Earl Grosvenor, from
whom it has descended to the present Duke of West
minster. A painting of the same subject is in the Sprague Col
lection at New York, and was exhibited at the International
Exhibition of Brussels in the summer of 1 9 1 o . It is diffi
cult to think that this painting, attractive as it is, can be
from the hand of Van Dyck himself. It should be re
membered that in 163 1 Sir Balthasar Gerbier purchased
for the Lord Treasurer Weston une forte belle Notre
Dame et Ste Catherine faict de la main de Van Dyck,

VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. CATHERINE
which purported to be one belonging to the Regent
Isabella. Van Dyck repudiated the authorship of Ger
bier's picture, and it is not impossible that Gerbier's
version may be the one which has found its way to the
United States.

VIII
CHRIST ON THE CROSS
IMPERIAL GALLERY, VIENNA
OF all the subjects outside portraiture which were
handled by Anthony Van Dyck, the one for
which he attained greatest repute, lasting even to
this day, was his rendering of the Crucified Christ. In
dealing with this subject, as with others, Van Dyck can
lay no claim to originality of idea or composition. The
* Crucified Christ' by Rubens in the Museum at Antwerp
is evidently the starting-point for all Van Dyck's versions
of the same subject. The dying Saviour, silhouetted
against the angry sky, with the house-tops of Jerusalem
just seen in the sunset below the hill, is all taken from
Rubens. Rubens was a great artist, but in his way a great
pagan. In his * Crucified Christ,' Rubens gives a most
masterly study of the distended human form, but his
religious feelings seem lost in his masterly study of the
human body. The sense of the Divine Sacrifice, the
Divine Agony, is wanting in Rubens, and it is the pre
valence of this sense in the rendering of the Crucified
Christ by Van Dyck which has brought fame to the
younger painter, and might, even without his achieve-
u

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
ments as a portrait- painter, have brought him immortality.
It is interesting to compare the Crucified Christ of Van
Dyck with that, for instance, of Eugene Delacroix, now in
the Thome-Thiery Collection in the Louvre. In spite of
the bleeding wounds, the effulgent halo, the agonised
expression of the suffering Saviour, it is evident that it
was the theatrical rather than the religious aspect of the
great Tragedy which inspired Delacroix's facile and pas
sionate brush. Only Albrecht Diirer has left perhaps as
simple and fragrant a rendering of the scene as Van Dyck,
and with Diirer art and religion were synonymous.
There are numerous versions of the Crucified Christ
by Van Dyck, executed, as it would appear, at different
periods of his career, and in many cases, as it may be sur
mised, the work for the most part of the assistants in his
studio. Those, however, executed in his earlier days at
Antwerp or at Genoa, may be safely attributed to his own
hand, and of these one of the best is the example selected
here, which is now in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna.
It is recorded somewhere, that at one time during the
prolonged preparations for the famous Passion Play at
Ober-Ammergau, the peasant selected for the onerous
part of Jesus Christ paid special attention to the most
difficult and fatiguing part of his role, the suspen
sion on the Cross of a real living human body. For
this purpose it was necessary to study all the pictorial
renderings of the scene, and it was found that the painter
who displayed the most suitable knowledge, physical
and emotional, of the human body suspended and dis-

CHRIST ON THE CROSS
tended in what was intended originally to be a position of
torture and punishment, was Anthony Van Dyck. This
decision was in itself a proof of the satisfactory complete
ness with which Van Dyck conceived and realised the
great Tragedy of the Christian Faith.

IX
THE LAMENTATION OVER
CHRIST
MUSEUM, ANTWERP
THE episode in the sacred story of the Passion,
when the Body of Jesus Christ has been taken
down from the Cross, and now lies prostrate in
death either on the ground before, or actually on the
knees of His weeping Mother, has always been, as might
be expected, one on which the Church has relied for the
most passionate emotions, and one which, in response
to the Church's demand, has called forth the highest
powers of the artist in every country, whether painter or
sculptor. In Italy the episode is usually known as La
Pieta, in the Netherlands, especially in Flanders, it was
spoken of as the NoodGods, the lowest point of pain and
sorrow to which the Deity could stoop, as an atonement
for human sin.
Such a scene, charged as it is with the highest
emotion, both human and divine, naturally lends itself
to rhetorical expression. Even the placid Early Italian is
moved to speak and cry aloud, as it were, in interpreting
this noble subject. Mantegna is as rhetorical as Rubens,

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Mazzoni, in sculpture, perhaps even more didactic than
Michelangelo. North of the Alps, Quentin Massys has
left a type of the Nood Gods which, in its simplicity, is
the most outspoken of them all. Rubens, as might have
been expected, is frankly rhetorical. He sees in the
subject a magnificent opportunity for the treatment of the
dead human body, foreshortened, inanimate, but anatomi
cally intensely interesting. The inaction of the subject
gave Rubens less opportunity for the full expression of
his vast genius than did the great compositions of the
* Elevation of the Cross ' and the ' Descent from the
Cross ' at Antwerp, in which pictorial rhetoric reached
its highest altitude.
As in his other religious compositions, Van Dyck
strikes a different note from Rubens. He borrows his
composition from Rubens, without any thought of expres
sion other than that of his great master. Early renderings
of the subject, such as the Nood Gods in the Liechtenstein
Collection at Vienna, are mere repetitions of Rubens, with
a certain youthful ardour added thereto. As years went
on, Van Dyck's religious susceptibilities increased, and,
whether it was the influence of the Jesuits, or that of his
sisters, he introduces into his sacred compositions, and
especially into the NoodGods,?*. tone of emotional rhetoric
which is quite different from the formal rhetoric of
Rubens. It is impossible to look at his most important
renderings of the Nood Gods, that at Antwerp, reproduced
here, and the larger version also in the Antwerp Museum,
at the great painting in the Kaiser- Friedrich Museum at

THE LAMENTATION OVER CHRIST
Berlin, or that in the Munich Gallery, without feeling
that these paintings are imbued with real religious
enthusiasm. Religious emotion is difficult, in fact impossible, to
define or interpret. To some the religious paintings by
Rubens will always be admirable, as great paintings,
while those by Van Dyck will be dismissed as mere
mechanical imitations ; others, while admiring the works
of Rubens in a palace or a gallery, will look upon those
by Van Dyck as better suited than his master's for the
service of the Church.

X and XI
PRINCE CHARLES LOUIS AND
PRINCE RUPERT OF BAVARIA
IMPERIAL GALLERY, VIENNA
AMONG the portraits of celebrated personages who
/\ were painted by Van Dyck, some of the most
popular and best known are those of the two
young Palatine princes, Charles Louis and Rupert, the
sons of Frederick V., the ill-starred Elector Palatine and
King of Bohemia, and Elizabeth Stuart, sister to Charles I.,
and the heroine of the long disastrous wars which ravaged
Central Europe for so many years.
Charles Louis and Rupert were second and third sons
of the King and Queen of Bohemia, but the tragic death
of their eldest brother by drowning in 1629 brought
Charles Louis into the succession as heir of the Palatinate.
Rupert was born in Prague during the short reign of his
parents in Bohemia, and narrowly escaped being left be
hind and lost altogether, when his parents fled before the
Emperor Ferdinand. The two boys were brought up in
exile at The Hague and sent to the University of Leyden.
Charles Louis, smooth tongued, selfish, and, as events
proved, an accomplished hypocrite, was his mother's
favourite, while Rupert, rough, ill-mannered, quick-

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
tempered, never engaged his mother's affection. It must
have been but a short time before Van Dyck's journey to
England that he visited Holland and painted the two boy-
princes at The Hague or Leyden. Rupert could not be
as much as thirteen, Charles Louis some two years older.
Their age helps to date Van Dyck's visit to Holland and
the court of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange. In the
whole gallery of Van Dyck's portraits there are few more
attractive than the companion portraits of the two young
Palatine brothers. Rupert with his dog is the forerunner
of all the series of Royalist portraits ; and one can already
read in his face the story of Marston Moor. The portraits
were brought from the Netherlands in the days of the
Emperor Charles VI.
Van Dyck was to meet the two brothers again. In
1632 the King of Bohemia died, and Charles Louis be
came titular Elector Palatine. He and Rupert were now
allowed to commence their military education with the
Prince of Orange. Their uncle, King Charles I., was,
however, deeply interested in the fate of his nephews. He
created Charles Louis a Knight of the Garter in 1633,
and invited the two brothers to visit him in England.
They arrived in 1636, and their introduction at court
excited keen interest. Curiously enough, the sedate,
calculating Elector Palatine, more concerned with the
recovery of his dominions than with the graces and eti
quette of a court, failed to please, while Rupert, wild,
reckless, and gallant, was a universal favourite, in spite of
his rough manners.

CHARLES LOUIS AND RUPERT OF BAVARIA
Van Dyck painted the two brothers in a double por
trait, representing them in armour, which is now in the
Louvre at Paris. This was probably during his residence
in the Netherlands in 1634. He painted them again in a
pair of full-length portraits, of which the superb originals
are in the possession of the Earl of Craven, at Combe
Abbey, the descendant of Elizabeth of Bohemia's devoted
and loyal friend. These portraits are known by many
school copies, and have always been very popular. They
are sometimes described erroneously as portraits of Prince
Rupert and Prince Maurice, but Van Dyck never saw
Prince Maurice, and in any circumstances could never
have painted him. Before the Palatine princes entered
on the stage of history, the painter, who has made them
immortal, was in his grave in St. Paul's Cathedral.

XII
PORTRAIT OF
MARIA LUIGIA DE TASSIS
LIECHTENSTEIN COLLECTION, VIENNA
THE portrait of Maria Luigia de Tassis in the col
lection of Prince Liechtenstein at Vienna is one
of the best known among the portraits of ladies
by Van Dyck, owing to the various fine engravings or
etchings which have been made from the portrait. The
style of painting, the peculiar fashion of the rich costume,
all point to the lady, like other great ladies of the period,
having belonged to the Spanish and French court-circles
congregated at Brussels. The family of Tassis was one
of the great Austro-Spanish families settled in Brabant.
The slashed sleeves, tied in at the elbow so as to make
gigot shape, the corsage open at the neck, and the ruff
or collar falling away from the head, are all to be found in
Van Dyck's portraits of the Duchess of Lorraine, Genevieve
d'Urfe, Duchesse de Croy, Amalia van Solms, wife of the
Prince of Orange, and other great ladies of the time, such
as the portrait of the Youssupoff Collection. The fashion
quickly came into vogue, and was adopted by ladies
of wealth, like Charlotte Butkens, whose portrait is at

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Gotha, and Helena Fourment, the second wife of Rubens,
whose full-length portrait in black with a fan, sometimes
attributed to Rubens himself, is in the Hermitage at
Petersburg. In the two last portraits we get also the
graceful motive of the white ostrich-feather fan. The
sidelong, rather alluring look of Maria Luigia de Tassis
brings her portrait into contact with the famous portrait
of Beatrice de Cusance, Princesse de Cante-Croix and
afterwards Duchess of Lorraine, so well known to visitors
at Windsor Castle. As this latter portrait must have been
painted by Van Dyck during his visit to Brussels in 1634,
it may be assumed that Maria Luigia de Tassis had her
portrait taken on the same occasion. An admirable por
trait of one Don Antonio de Tassis, an aristocratic priest,
evidently belonging to the Society of Jesus, is also in the
Liechtenstein Collection. We may assume that he was the
brother of Maria Luigia. They were probably related to
the ill-fated Don Juan de Tassis, Count of Villa Mediana,
whose supposed intrigue with Queen Isabel of Spain led
to his assassination at Madrid in the open street in August
1622. Very little, however, is known about Maria Luigia de
Tassis, save that she has been immortalised by Van Dyck.
Her family seems to have been connected with, and per
haps of the same stock as the Princes of Thurn and Taxis,
the hereditary post-masters of the empire.

XIII
PORTRAIT OF
FRANCISCO DE MONCADA, THIRD
MARQUES DAYTONA
THE LOUVRE, PARIS
CONSPICUOUS among the series of great portraits
painted by Anthony Van Dyck are the portraits
which he painted of the successive commanders-
in-chief, or generalissimi, of the Spanish forces in the
Netherlands, in addition to other military commanders
of great distinction in the troubled history of the period.
Beginning with Ambrogio Spinola, with whose family
Van Dyck had so many relations at Genoa, he painted
Hendrik, Count of Jiilich and Berg ; Thomas, Prince of
Savoie-Carignan ; and Francisco de Moncada, Marques
d'Aytona. Moncada was a trusted statesman and skilled
diplomatist, besides being a military commander, and was
sent to the Netherlands in 1633 to command the forces.
Shortly after his arrival the Regent Isabella Clara Eugenia
died, and in the interval between the appointment of
another regent Moncada was practically acting-regent of
2 A

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
the Netherlands, until the arrival of the Infant Ferdinand.
In this capacity he was instrumental in bringing the re
bellious States once more under the Spanish yoke. During
Van Dyck's visit to Brussels in 1634 Francisco de Mon
cada, Marques d'Aytona, was the principal personage
at the court. It is not surprising, therefore, that Van
Dyck should have painted more than one portrait of
Moncada, and done his best to please so powerful a
patron. There are three distinct portraits of Moncada by Van
Dyck. The best known is that in armour, as military
commander. A bust portrait showing the general in
armour with a plain broad linen collar is in the Louvre,
and formerly belonged to the private collection of King
Louis XIV., who valued it highly. It is evidently the
study for the full-length portrait of Moncada on horse
back, also in the Louvre. In this portrait, over which Van
Dyck seems to have taken much trouble, the painter has
sought to flatter Moncada by painting him in the attitude
of the painter's royal master, King Charles I., and using
his own studies of the horse and figure.
Moncada was painted by Van Dyck in civilian dress
in the three-quarter-length portrait in the Imperial Gallery
at Vienna, a portrait perhaps more striking in mere de
lineation of character than the equestrian portrait at Paris.
A third and little-known portrait of Moncada by Van
Dyck, showing him at whole length in a black dress and
cloak, is in the gallery at Cassel, and was acquired for the
Electoral Gallery in 1745. A bust portrait, which can

PORTRAIT OF FRANCISCO DE MONCADA
hardly claim to be an original, is at Northwick House in
Worcestershire. All these portraits must have been executed by Van
Dyck at Brussels in 1634, since the Marques d'Aytona
did not come to the Netherlands until 163 1, and died in
1635, soon a^ter tne Pointer's return to England.

XIV
RINALDO AND ARMIDA
DUKE OF NEWCASTLE, CLUMBER
THE famous epic poem Orlando Fur ioso, by Ariosto,
provided material for the history-painter for
some generations. So few persons have read
the poem nowadays that it is difficult to comprehend
the hold which it had upon our forefathers, even down to
the end of the eighteenth century. The poem is, however,
full of picturesque situations, charged with sensuous
beauty, and remains a splendid monument of the pseudo-
classic art of the Italian Renaissance. It is a tribute to
Ariosto himself, that whereas so many epic poems of his
day have been forgotten altogether or relegated to the
class of extinct monsters, Ariosto's story of Orlando, of
Rinaldo and Armida still excites some lingering reminis
cences in our minds. On one occasion it may be the
magic music of Gluck, on another a tapestry by Coypel,
or again a painting by Van Dyck, but the ensnaring of
the hero, Rinaldo or Renaud, in the magic garden of
Armida has been the prototype of many similar incidents,
such as the temptation of Parsifal by the Flower-maidens
2 B

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
and by Kundry. In the days of Van Dyck the tale of
Rinaldo and Armida was a stock subject for painter, poet,
or musician, and had been brought into vogue in England
through the translation into English by Sir John Har
rington. The subject seems to have been a favourite with
Van Dyck, though it was not well known in Flanders,
and may have been suggested to Van Dyck from England.
Rubens does not appear to have handled it. A commis
sion, however, seems to have reached Van Dyck for a
painting of this subject through Endymion Porter, groom
of the Bedchamber to King Charles I. On 23 rd March
1629-30, an order on the Exchequer was issued to pay
to Endymion Porter, one of the grooms of his Majesty's
Bedchamber, the sum of ^78 'for ane picture of the Storie
of Reynaldo and Armida bought by him of Monsieur
Vandick of Antwerpe as delivered to his Matie in that
accompt. . . .' This picture is evidently the { Storie out of
Ariosto by Van Dyck' which, at the dispersal of the king's
pictures in 1649, was so^ to Col. Webb for^*8o. Two
important renderings of this subject by Van Dyck exist, and
others are to be found in Continental collections. There
is a well-known painting in the Louvre of ' Rinaldo and
Armida,' which was engraved in 1644. This is quite a
distinct composition from the painting in the collection of
the Duke of Newcastle. This is also authenticated by a
contemporary engraving, and appears to be the picture
which originally belonged to Charles I. Several copies of
it are known to exist. In the Newcastle version the
influence of Titian is very strong in colour, grouping,

RINALDO AND ARMIDA
and especially the nude nymph who is rising from the
water. The infant putti are characteristic of Van Dyck
himself, and the sleeping Rinaldo would seem to be a
portrait of Van Dyck's friend at Antwerp, the musician
Liberti. It belongs to the same period as the picture of
Venus at the Forge of Vulcan, now in the Imperial
Gallery at Vienna, which is even more reminiscent of Titian
and the Italian Renaissance. Composed as it is of special
formulas, a splendid machine as it might be called, the
picture all the same is of very fine quality, and raises Van
Dyck to a high rank among the painters of history and
mythology.

PHILIP, LORD WHARTON
THE HERMITAGE, PETERSBURG
THE portrait of Philip, Lord Wharton, is one of the
chief treasures of the Russian Imperial Collection
in the Hermitage Gallery at Petersburg. It
was lent by the Emperor of Russia to the Van Dyck
Exhibition at Antwerp in 1899, and again to the Winter
Exhibition of the Royal Academy during the following
winter. Its peculiar charm exercised a fascinating in
fluence on the public, and was recognised by painters and
critics alike.
The portrait marks an important epoch in the painter's
life. It was painted in 1632, when the subject was but
nineteen years old, and soon after Van Dyck's arrival in
England. The young Lord Wharton, a peer since his
childhood, was one of the handsomest youths and the best
dancers at the court of King Charles I. At this early age,
and in this very year, he was married, and it was without
doubt this happy event which led to this famous portrait
by Van Dyck. In this painting Van Dyck appears in a
new light. Although during the past few years at Antwerp
he had shown himself a powerful colourist, even when re
stricting himself to the intensity of black and white, the
2 c

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
painter now reveals himself as an expert in gay and
brilliantly lighted surface treatment, evidently more con
genial to the lively court circle, of which he now formed
a member, and at which such masquerading as shepherds
and shepherdesses was a fashionable conceit.
The scheme of colour in this portrait, yellow, purple,
and green, is peculiar to Van Dyck, although it is pro
bably based on notes taken during his residence in Italy
from Paolo Veronese. His blending of the colours is
admirably effected, the colours are simply but surely laid
on, and the effect produced by glazings in the Italian
manner. In the hands of a less skilful executant such a
blend of colour might have appeared cheap and crude.
Under the hand of Van Dyck they not only unite with
each other to make the glamour of the painting, but serve
to enhance the beauty of the youthful nobleman's head,
which remains, as always with Van Dyck, the important
point of observation in the portrait. It is inevitable that
a certain amount of the beauty of the rich fruity colour,
of the values and the scheme of lighting, should be lost in
any form of reproduction.
This portrait must be carefully distinguished from the
later portrait of the same Lord Wharton, painted by Van
Dyck some five years later for Lord Wharton's house at
Winchendon in Buckinghamshire. This series of portraits
by Van Dyck passed into the hands of Sir Robert Wal-
pole, who purchased them at the break-up of the spend
thrift Duke of Wharton's estate, and they were again
dispersed by Walpole's own spendthrift grandson, the

PHILIP, LORD WHARTON
third Earl of Orford. Some found their way to Peters
burg, being purchased for the Empress Catherine, and the
earlier portrait of Philip, Lord Wharton, shared this fate.
The whole-length portrait of Lord Wharton, painted in
1637, was purchased by the Earl of Hardwicke, from
whom it descended to its present owner, Lord Lucas, who
has deposited it on loan in the National Gallery. Another
version of this later picture, with other portraits of the
Wharton family, is in the possession of Philip, Lord
Wharton's descendant, Mr. Kemeys-Tynte of Halsewell,
near Bridgewater. In his later years Lord Wharton be
came a strong adherent of the parliamentary cause, a
transition well illustrated by the difference between the
careless shepherd in golden brown of 1 63 2 and the sedate,
already careworn courtier of 1637.

XVI
QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA
LADY WANTAGE, LOCKINGE
HENRIETTA MARIA, queen-consort of King
Charles I., may be said to owe her place in his
tory to her portraits by Van Dyck. The daughter
of Henry IV. and Marie de' Medicis could hardly fail in
many of the graces and dignities which befit a queen.
Contemporary writers are not enthusiastic about her
beauty, though they all credit her with charm and a pleas
ing appearance. Posterity judges her from the portraits
by Van Dyck, who depicted her in many varying atti
tudes and dresses, until the refined face, with its fine eyes
and dark-brown ringleted hair, has become oneof the most
familiar types in history.
It was naturally one of the first duties of Anthony
Van' Dyck on his arrival in England in 1632 to paint
portraits of the king and queen. Apart from the great
family group at Windsor Castle, the earliest portrait of
the queen, painted by Van Dyck, was that of which one
version is here reproduced. The queen stands by a table,
clothed in white and silver with pink bows and ribbons.
Her right hand rests on a table on which are the royal
2 D

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
cloak and some roses. She is in the heyday of her happy
life, most of the cares and troubles of her early married
life having been removed, while the shadow of the tragedy
to come had not yet fallen across her path. So she ap
pears in this portrait, the original of which is no doubt
that at Windsor Castle, which is noted as having been a
special favourite with King Charles I.
This portrait was evidently much appreciated at the
time, as would appear from the number of replicas and
copies which exist. The queen no doubt gave Van Dyck
more than one commission to repeat the portrait for royal
purposes. One of the best of these repetitions was evi
dently sent to Brussels, probably as a present to the regent,
Isabella Clara Eugenia, after whose death it remained in
the royal palace at Tervueren, near Brussels. During the
wars which raged round Brussels for so many years the
picture changed hands more than once, being appropri
ated at one time by the Elector of Bavaria, and at another
by the Emperor Charles VI. Finally, when the Duke of
Marlborough entered Brussels as a conqueror in 1708,
Van Dyck's portrait of Henrietta Maria, together with the
great equestrian portrait of Charles I., was selected by
the duke as a gift from the town of Brussels, and removed
to England to adorn the picture gallery of the duke's new
palace at Blenheim. There the picture remained until
1885, when it was sold, and purchased by Lord Wantage.
Another version of this portrait of equal excellence
was formerly in the collection of the Marquess of Lans-
downe, K.G., and is now in that of Mr. Edmund Davis.

QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA
Others of varying merit are to be found in other private
collections. The same portrait, with slight modifications, was used
by Van Dyck for the double portrait of Henrietta Maria
giving a laurel wreath to Charles I., which is now in the
collection of the Duke of Grafton, K.G., at Euston.

XVII
JAMES STANLEY, SEVENTH EARL
OF DERBY
WITH HIS WIFE, CHARLOTTE, AND THEIR
DAUGHTER, KATHERINE
Messrs. KNOEDLER & CO., LONDON AND NEW YORK
JAMES STANLEY, Lord Strange, eldest son of
William, sixth Earl of Derby, and Elizabeth,
daughter of Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of
Oxford, was born at Knowsley on January 31, 1606/7.
As the heir of one of the most powerful magnates in the
north of England, and the Sovereign Lord of the Isle of
Man, he was considered worthy of an important matri
monial alliance, in which politics and religion took a part.
Among the princesses and ducal relatives of the House of
Orange at The Hague in Holland was Charlotte, eldest
daughter of Claude de La Tremouille, Due de Thouars,
by his wife Charlotte, third daughter of William the Silent,
Prince of Orange, by his third wife, Charlotte de Bourbon.
The marriage with Lord Strange appears to have been ar
ranged by the Queen of Bohemia, and took place at The
Hague on June 26, 1626, the bride being seven years
older than her husband.
2 £

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Lord Strange was a man of retiring habits and literary
tastes. He preferred country pursuits to court-life, and
though devoted to the king's service, he was opposed to
any unconstitutional action on the king's part, while in
matters of religion he was a moderate partisan, and not in
sympathy with the advanced Church policy of Archbishop
Laud. He took so little part in public affairs that his
loyalty was doubted, but at the first outbreak of war in
1639 he joined the king at York, and when the Civil
War really broke out he proved himself one of the most
ardent supporters of the royalist cause in Lancashire,
although his principal efforts were unsuccessful and his
military capacity not very great. On September 2 9, 1 642 ,
Lord Strange succeeded his father as seventh Earl of
Derby. As the royalist cause continued to be unsuccess
ful in Lancashire, the Earl of Derby's residence, Lathom
House, became the last stronghold of the cause. In
February 1643/4 the house was invested by Sir William
Fairfax's army, but the Countess of Derby, who was then
in residence with her children, declined to surrender, and
declared that she and her children would rather perish in the
flames of the castle than yield. The siege lasted until May,
when Lathom House was relieved by the king's army under
Prince Rupert. The Earl of Derby took part in the relief
of his home and family, but after the destructive defeat
at Marston Moor, he removed with his family to the Isle
of Man, where he continued to maintain the royalist cause
and refused to make terms with the Parliament. In 1 65 1 ,
though far from sanguine of success, he crossed to Lanca
shire and joined Charles II. 's army. He was badly defeated

EARL AND COUNTESS OF DERBY AND CHILD
at Wigan, but escaped to join Charles at Worcester, after
which he conducted the king to Boscobel. Returning
north he was captured by the parliamentary army, and
arraigned for high treason. In spite of Cromwell's support,
he was condemned as a traitor, and executed at Bolton on
October 15, 165 1. After his death the Isle of Man was
surrendered to the Parliament, and the Countess of Derby
removed to Knowsley, where she died on March 21,
1663/4. The Earl and Countess of Derby had nine children,
of whom the second daughter, Lady Katherine Stanley,
afterwards Marchioness of Dorchester, appears to be the
child painted with her parents by Van Dyck.
Although the earl and countess did not mix much in
court circles in London, the connection of Van Dyck
with Prince Frederick Henry of Orange and his wife,
Amalia van Solms, would have recommended him to
their niece, the Countess of Derby. The portrait group,
which passed into the possession of the Earl of Clarendon,
who had shared the exile of the English court at The
Hague, remained until lately in the possession of his de
scendant at The Grove near Watford. It is one of Van
Dyck's most important English paintings outside those
painted for the king. The composition is somewhat
awkward and ill-balanced, but the character of the earl
and countess well defined. The figure of the child is a
particularly fine piece of painting. A study for the
figure of the countess is in the Print Room at the British
Museum.

XVIII
WILLIAM CAVENDISH, DUKE OF
NEWCASTLE
DUKE OF PORTLAND, WELBECK ABBEY
NO figure was more conspicuous in his time than
William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. Born
in 1592, he was the son of Sir Charles Caven-
dish,and grandson of Sir William Cavendish and Elizabeth
Hardwick. Arabella Stuart was his first cousin. His
mother was Catherine, Baroness Ogle in her own right.
From boyhood William Cavendish was associated with
the court, and in 1 6 1 9 he entertained King James I. at
Welbeck Abbey, an expensive business which was re
peated on more than one occasion. The king created
him Viscount Mansfield, and after the accession of King
Charles I. he was created Earl of Newcastle. In 1638 he
was appointed by the king to be governor to the Prince
of Wales, to whom he taught horsemanship. In 1639 ^e
raised a troop of horse, entirely of gentlemen, to support
the king in his Scottish campaign. Subsequently New
castle took the leading part in the military operations in
the north of England in the king's cause, which he main
tained with varying success, until the fatal battle of Marston
2 F

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
Moor in July 1 644, in which he fought bravely as a volun
teer, in spite of Prince Rupert's refusal to follow New
castle's advice. After this disaster Newcastle, who had
been made a marquess a year earlier, despaired of the royal
cause, and took refuge in Paris. Subsequently he removed
to Antwerp, where he settled until the Restoration, de
voting himself to his famous riding-school, and the pre
paration of his great work on Horsemanship, with which
his name will always be connected.
After the Restoration Newcastle followed King Charles
II. to England, and was treated with great honour. His
estates and revenues were restored. He was created Duke
of Newcastle, and made K.G. He took, however, no
further part in public life, but remained at Welbeck Abbey,
employing his time in horsemanship, racing, and litera
ture. Some of his plays had some success on the stage,
and he was assisted by Dryden, who owed something to
the duke's patronage. Newcastle died in 1676, and was
buried in Westminster Abbey.
The full-length portrait of the Duke of Newcastle
at Welbeck Abbey has descended to its present owner,
the Duke of Portland, K.G., by direct inheritance from
the Duke of Newcastle's granddaughter, Margaret, who
married John Holies, Earl of Clare, afterwards Duke of
Newcastle, and was mother of Henrietta Cavendish Holies,
who married Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford, and
was in her turn mother to Lady Margaret Harley, wife of
the second Duke of Portland.
The duke stands at full length, in black dress, in a

WILLIAM CAVENDISH, DUKE OF NEWCASTLE
pose very characteristic of Van Dyck. At a later date the
ribbon and the cloak with the star of the Garter have been
added, which injure the effect of the picture. A copy of
the portrait in its original state with the red ribbon of the
Bath is preserved at Welbeck Abbey. A replica of the
original portrait in Althorp House, belonging to Earl
Spencer, to whom it also descended by inheritance by the
marriage of Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland with Ara
bella, third daughter of Henry Cavendish, second Duke
of Newcastle. There is a slight difference in the heads
in these two portraits, but the head in the Welbeck version
seems to have more character and distinction than that at
Althorp.

XIX
PORTRAIT OF
ARTHUR GOODWIN, M.P.
DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE, CHATSWORTH
ARTHUR GOODWIN, born about 1593-4, was son
/\, of Sir Francis Goodwin of Upper Winchendon
in Buckinghamshire. He was an early friend of
John Hampden at Oxford University and at the Inner
Temple, and sat in Parliament as Hampden's colleague in
the representation of Buckinghamshire. During the Civil
War, Goodwin held a command, like Hampden, in the
parliamentary army under the Earl of Essex, and when
Hampden received his mortal wound, Goodwin took him
to Thame and remained with him to the end. He did
not survive his friend very long, as he died in the same
year, 1-643, and was buried at Woburn in Buckingham
shire. Arthur Goodwin married Jane, third daughter of Sir
Richard Wenman, of Thame Park, Oxfordshire, by whom
he had an only daughter, Jane, who in 1637 became the
second wife of Philip, fourth Lord Wharton. It was
through this marriage that Arthur Goodwin came to be
painted by Van Dyck. Philip, Lord Wharton, as has
2 G

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
been stated elsewhere, had a series of portraits of his
family painted by Van Dyck for his house at Winchen-
don, which he had inherited through this marriage. The
portraits were mostly at full-length, and among these was
the portrait of A rthur Goodwin, here reproduced. When
the Duke of Wharton's estate was sold, the portrait of
Arthur Goodwin was among those purchased by Sir
Robert Walpole, who subsequently presented this portrait
to his friend the Duke of Devonshire, since which date
the picture has remained at Chatsworth.
The portrait of Arthur Goodwin is one of Van
Dyck's happiest efforts in portraiture, not only for the
likeness, and the simplicity and dignity of its pose, but
also for its peculiar scheme of colour. In this scheme
of yellow, orange and brown, Van Dyck was carrying
out a scheme similar to that employed in the portrait of
Philip, Lord Wharton, at the time of his first marriage in
1632. Van Dyck was very partial to the use of yellow.

\

XX
SIR WILLIAM KILLIGREW
DUKE OF NEWCASTLE, CLUMBER
THE court of Queen Elizabeth was a happy hunt
ing-ground for the young adventurer, and if he
were possessed of a handsome face, a shapely leg,
and a ready wit, there were plenty of opportunities for
attracting royal notice and finding one's way into royal
favour. This was especially the case with courtiers from
the south-western counties of England, Somerset, Devon,
and Cornwall, and these counties may well be proud of
the names of Raleigh, Carew, Gorges, and others. Among
the young men who found their way from Cornwall to
London was a certain William Killigrew, an impecunious
gentleman from Arwennack. Undeterred by lack of
money he got a post at court as groom of the Privy Cham
ber, obtained valuable privileges from the queen, and sat
in Parliament for various constituencies in Cornwall. He
continued to enjoy the favour of King James I., who
knighted him, and was the founder of a family who were
perhaps among the best known figures at the courts of
James I. and Charles I., for their wit, their power of
2 H

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
getting on, and their eye to the main chance. William
Killigrew's brother, Sir Henry, was both diplomatist and
painter. Sir Robert Killigrew, who shared his father's favour
with King James I., who knighted him in the same year,
also represented Cornwall in Parliament. He is chiefly
known by his connection with the mystery of Sir Thomas
Overbury's death in the Tower, as Killigrew, who had
the family knack, or foible, of being able to turn his hand
to anything, was a dabbler in medicine, and prepared the
powders which were said to have hastened Overbury's
death. Be it as it may, Killigrew managed to stick to
his place at court, chiefly through the interest of Bucking
ham, and died Vice-Chamberlain to the queen. The
family were born into court circles, and retained position
at court with an almost barnacle-like tenacity. With
them Van Dyck must have associated with great pleasure.
Men and women alike, the Killigrew family were witty,
reckless, and the best of company. Thomas Killigrew, the
younger brother, was one of the king's boon companions,
his licensed wit and jester, who after the Restoration was
to earn something like immortality as the reviver of the
English stage and the founder of Drury Lane Theatre.
Anne Killigrew, his sister, Lady of the Bedchamber to the
queen, married George Kirke, and her portrait by Van
Dyck is reproduced in this volume. Elizabeth Killigrew
became Viscountess Shannon and established her position
at court as one of Charles II. 's reigning sultanas. Henry
Killigrew, who possessed the family talent for dramatic art,

SIR WILLIAM KILLIGREW
became chaplain to the king and attended him during
the Civil Wars. He died Master of the Savoy, leaving a
daughter, Anne, who obtained some distinction as a
painter. Theeldest brother ofthis family, Sir William Killigrew,
whose portrait is reproduced here, showed all the family
gifts, as poet, dramatist, politician, and court official, both
under Charles I. and Charles II. In the latter reign he
produced some plays which have enjoyed some, by no
means unmerited, repute. He died in 1 695, almost ninety
years of age, and with him the family of Killigrew dis
appeared from the stage of court and public affairs in
England.

XXI
PORTRAIT OF MRS. ANNE KIRKE
LORD LUCAS, NATIONAL GALLERY
A MONG the families who established themselves in
/X favour at the courts of King James I. and King
Charles I. none was so prominent, so assertive, or
took so much part in promoting the gaiety and liveliness
of court life as the Cornish family of Killigrew. It was
by wit and address that the Killigrews got on, for they
had neither wealth nor rank to bring them into notice.
An account of Sir Robert Killigrew, and his children, Sir
William and Thomas Killigrew, has been given in the
preceding article.
These gay spirits had several sisters, who played as
lively a note at court as their brothers. One of these fair
ladies, Anne Killigrew, was the wife of George Kirke,
Gentleman of the Robes to Charles I., and was herself one
of the powerful ladies-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta
Maria, and attached to her royal person.
The Killigrew family were all among the sitters to
Van Dyck. Mrs. Kirke evidently had a high opinion of
the handsome painter, as she sat to him for more than one
portrait. In one of these, here reproduced, the painter has
2 I

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
put forth some of his best efforts, and has made the por
trait a special study in golden yellows. That this colour
was something of a favourite with Van Dyck is known
from the notes on the technique of painting kept by the
famous physician, Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne.
Mayerne speaks of Van Dyck's treatment of yellow, and
says, * He makes use of orpiment, which is the finest yellow
that is to be found ; but it dries very slowly, and, when
mixed with other colours, it destroys them. In order to
make it dry a little ground glass should be added to it. In
making use of it, it should be applied by itself: the drapery
(for which alone it is fit) having been prepared with other
yellows. Upon these, when dry, the lights should be
painted with orpiment: your work will then be in the
highest degree beautiful.'
In this beautiful portrait Mrs. Kirke stands at full
length in a garden in yellow silk, with a little dog leaping
at her skirt. The portrait was in the possession of Sir
Peter Lely, who made a special study of it. At the sale of
Lely's collection in 1682 it was bought by Henry Grey,
Earl of Kent, from whom it has descended by inheritance
through the Earls of Hardwicke and Cowper to its present
owner, Lord Lucas, by whom it has been deposited on
loan in the National Gallery.

XXII
LUCIUS CARY, SECOND VISCOUNT
FALKLAND
DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE, DEVONSHIRE HOUSE, LONDON
LUCIUS CARY, born in 1609 or ioio, was the son of
j Sir Henry Cary, Lord Deputy of Ireland, who was
in 1620 created Viscount Falkland in the Scottish
peerage. His mother, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Laurence
Tanfield, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, was noted for
her learning, her linguistic attainments, and her religious
zeal. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, but in
1625 inherited from his grandfather, by whom, in conse
quence of dissensions between his parents, he had been
principally brought up, the manors of Bashford and Great
Tew in Oxfordshire, of which he took possession in 1629,
when about nineteen years old. As early marriages were
then in fashion, Lucius Cary married, before he was of age,
Lettice, daughter of Sir Richard Morrison, a step which
brought about a final quarrel with his father, so that he
went for a time to Holland. On his return Lucius Cary
settled himself down to a life of study and rural pursuits
at Great Tew, which were disturbed by his father's unex-
2 K

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
pected death in 1633, which compelled him to come to
London to settle his family affairs. At this time Lord
Falkland was very much under the influence of his
mother, a fervent Catholic, but this was counteracted by
his friendship with Dr. Chillingworth, and the doctrines
known as Socinianism, which produced strained relations
with his mother, until her death in 1639.
Lord Falkland preferred the peace of country life to
the affairs of State or the distractions of a court. His
house was the resort of learned men from Oxford and
London, and many contemporary authorities agree in
praising the charm of his character as a host, his intel
lectual powers, and the modesty with which he engaged
them. When the struggle between the king and Parliament
began, Falkland was divided in his interests, but loyalty
compelled him to join the cause of the king, and he volun
teered for action in the Scottish campaign. He was thus
brought into public life, and entered Parliament. His in
tense zeal for liberty, intellectual, religious, and political,
led him to join the resistance to the policies of Archbishop
Laud and the Earl of Strafford, and to the exaction of
ship-money. At the same time loyalty to the king pre
vented him from joining the parliamentary party. In
1642 he was appointed Secretary of State, and soon found
himself a leader in a war which he detested, and in which
he was out of sympathy with either of the contending
parties. Always a fatalist and weary of life, he anticipated
with joy the battle of Newbury, where he exposed him-

LUCIUS CARY, VISCOUNT FALKLAND
self with a recklessness almost amounting to suicide, and
found the death to which he had looked forward.
The beautiful portrait of Lucius Cary in the posses
sion of the Duke of Devonshire must have been painted,
together with the companion portrait of Charles Caven
dish, soon after Van Dyck's arrival in England, when
Lord Falkland made his first appearance in London
society. There are few faces in the gallery of Van Dyck's
portraits more striking than that of the young student of
Great Tew, the philosophic politician, who illustrated in
his life and death the futility of being honest enough to
see both sides of a question.

XXIII
THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF
STRAFFORD, AND HIS SECRETARY
EARL FITZWILLIAM, WENTWORTH WOODHOUSE
1 T) UT Wentworth, — who ever names him without
J3 thinking of those harsh dark features, ennobled
by their expression into more than the majesty
of an antique Jupiter ; of that brow, that eye, that cheek,
that lip, wherein, as in a chronicle, are written the events
of many stormy and disastrous years, high enterprise
accomplished, frightful dangers braved, power unspar
ingly exercised, suffering unshrinkingly borne, of that
fixed look, so full of severity, of mournful anxiety, of deep
thought, of dauntless resolution, which seems at once to
forebode and to defy a terrible fate, as it lowers on us from
the living canvas of Van Dyck ? Even at this day the
haughty earl overawes posterity as he overawed his con
temporaries, and excites the same interest when arraigned
before the tribunal of history which he excited at the bar
of the House of Lords. In spite of ourselves, we some
times feel towards his memory a certain relen^ng similar
to that relenting which his defence, as Sir John Denham
tells us, produced in Westminster Hall.'
2 L

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
In this famous paragraph, from his essay on Lord
Nugent's Memorials of Hampden, the great historian,
Lord Macaulay, pays his tribute to Anthony Van Dyck
as a painter of history. It is difficult, perhaps, to gauge
how much of the sympathy with the royalist cause has
been due to the portraits by Van Dyck. Charles I.,
with his pathetic and fateful look, excites a sympathy and
a passionate devotion which is denied to Walker's power
ful rendering of Oliver Cromwell. Strafford and Laud
live for posterity in Van Dyck's portraits, and it is impos
sible to dissociate one's judgment of their share in the
opening scenes of the great drama of the Civil War from
the sense of personality which is imposed by Van Dyck's
particular interpretation of their character.
In this Van Dyck establishes his claim to be regarded
as an interpreter of character, as well as a painter of
elegant and attractive portraits. It would have been easy
to fail with Strafford, and to have made him clumsy and
unattractive. It is in the portrait also that Van Dyck's
strength lies. The group itself is nothing but a transcript
from a well-known group of Andrea Doria and his Secre
tary, by Titian, at Genoa, of which several versions
exist, and with which Van Dyck must have been well
acquainted. Van Dyck has concentrated all his art on
the head and hand of Strafford, the portrait of the Secre
tary, Mainwaring, being of secondary importance in itself,
but of the greatest value as a counterfoil to that of the
great earl his master.
It is in such a painting that Van Dyck shows how in

THOMAS WENTWORTH AND HIS SECRETARY
London his hand had by no means lost its cunning,
although the demands of fashion and the insistence of
his clients compelled him to fall back upon his assistants,
and to leave a great part of the work entirely in their
hands.

XXIV

WILLIAM II., PRINCE OF ORANGE,
AND PRINCESS MARY STUART

RYKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM

ROYAL marriages are more often than not arranged
^ for political purposes rather than from any chance
of affection or love being shown by the parties
concerned before they were tied together for life. In
1 64 1 the bright days of King Charles I.'s reign were be
ginning to close in storm clouds and threatenings of worse
tempests to come. For various reasons, political and re
ligious, an alliance with the States of Holland was desirable,
and it seemed that the best way of bringing this about
was a marriage between the boy, William, son of Prince
Frederick Henry of Orange and Amalia van Solms-
Braunfels, and the Princess Royal, Mary, eldest-born child
of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria. The boy was but fif
teen, the girl nine years old, yet their fate was sealed and
their troth plighted before either of the children had
arrived at years of discretion. Holland was at first con
sidered an unworthy alliance for the Princess Royal of
England, who seemed at one time destined for her first
cousin, the Elector Palatine. Obstacles were, however,

2 M

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
overcome, and on May 2, 1641, a Sunday and a day, as it
happened, of great gloom, the children were united in
marriage at Whitehall.
This was the last festivity at the court of Charles I.
and Henrietta Maria. It was natural that the services of
their court-painter should be required. Sir Anthony Van
Dyck, broken in health and weary of his life at the English
court, and of unpaid commissions, had gone some months
before to Antwerp to arrange for his taking up the artistic
heritage of his late master, Rubens, and had since gone to
France in the hope of obtaining a great commission there,
like that entrusted to Rubens at the Palais du Luxembourg.
In this hope he had been bitterly disappointed, and re
turned to London, mortified in his vanity and suffering
in his health.
Van Dyck was called upon to paint the young
couple, and among other portraits executed the popular
double portrait of the bride and bridegroom hand-in-
hand. It is one of the most attractive of Van Dyck's
groups, although the handling of the picture is weaker
and tamer than in his earlier days. Ill-health, no doubt,
dulled the painter's skill. There were doubtless many de
mands in Holland and England for portraits of the young
prince and his bride, but it is doubtful to what extent they
were executed by Van Dyck himself. Jane, Countess of
Roxburghe, who had been the princess's governess, wrote
in August 1 64 1 to Baron de Brederode at The Hague :
' Le malheur m'en a tant voulu que Monsieur Van Dyck
a presque toujours este malade depuis votre depart de ce

WILLIAM II. AND PRINCESS MARY STUART
Pays, tellement que je n'ay pu avoir le portrait qu'il fai-
soit de monsieur le prince jusqu'a cette heure. Mais il
a promis asseurement a la Reyne qu'il auroit le vostre
prest dans huict jours ! et qu'il desiroit le porter lui-
mesme avec un autre qu'il faisoit pour Madame la prin-
cesse d' Auranges. Il est resolu de partir dans dix ou douze
jours de ce pays par le plus tard : et en passant par l'Hol-
lande il vous donnera le portrait de Madame.' The
painter probably managed to execute his commission, for
he was at Antwerp again in October 1 64 1 , and in Novem
ber again in Paris, whence he returned to London only to
die on December 9 following.
The double portrait of William II. and Mary Stuart
remained a cherished possession of the royal family in
England, until their son's accession to the throne as
William III. King William, whose heart remained in his
native country of Holland, removed this painting and
others of great value to his Dutch palace of Het Loo.
After his death these pictures were reclaimed by Queen
Anne, but the government of the States-General declined
to return them. As the demand was not pressed the
picture remained in Holland, and the double portrait of
William and Mary by Van Dyck adorns the Ryks Museum
at Amsterdam instead of Windsor Castle.

XXV
PORTRAIT OF ANTHONY VAN
DYCK WITH A SUNFLOWER
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER, GROSVENOR HOUSE, LONDON
A NTHONY VAN DYCK painted his own portrait
2~\. several times during his later years. The portrait
of himself, pointing to a sunflower, was repeated in
many versions, one of the best of which is in the collec
tion of the Duke of Westminster, K.G., at Grosvenor
House. Another version, which is perhaps the original,
belongs to Baron de Gargan at Brussels, while others are
to be found in the Galleries at Gotha and Carlsruhe, and
in various other private collections in England. Van Dyck
is richly clad in crimson silk, with a gold chain over his
right shoulder. He lifts this ostentatiously with his left
hand, while with his right he points to a large sunflower.
The face has grown longer and thinner, the features
sharper, and lines are beginning to show in the face,
although the painter could not be more than forty years
of age. An allegorical interpretation has been sought for
the portrait ; the painter is supposed to be indicating the
value of princely patronage by the gold chain of office and
the flower (girasole), which ever turns its face to the sun.
2 N

ANTHONY VAN DYCK
A similar portrait, however, exists of Van Dyck's friend,
Sir Kenelm Digby, at Hawarden Castle. Digby, who is
also pointing to a sunflower, was closely associated with
Van Dyck at this period, and the painter is supposed to
have injured his health by dabbling with Kenelm Digby
in alchemy and astrology and the search for the philoso
pher's stone.
Van Dyck's appearance in this portrait is sufficient to
prepare one for the news of his breakdown in health and
early death. Hard work and hard living have told on his
constitution. An even more painful effect is produced by
the portrait of himself at Windsor Castle, wrapped in a
black cloak, and evidently painted as a companion to the
famous portrait of Rubens at Vienna. Portraits of Van
Dyck at this period are fairly numerous, but very few can
be attributed to his own brush. Among these may be
noted the portrait in the Louvre, probably painted for
Jabach, his friend and patron ; that painted for the Grand
Duke of Tuscany at Florence ; and the double portrait
of himself and his friend, John Digby, Earl of Bristol, in
the Prado at Madrid. Perhaps the finest portrait of him
self is the head which he etched for the title-page of his
Centum Icones ; this portrait in its pure etched state, as it
left Van Dyck's hands, is one of the most perfect works of
art in existence. It shows Van Dyck at the zenith of his
career, before illness had begun to sharpen the delicate
features and disappointment to dull the brilliant look of
prosperity.

Text printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty, Edinburgh
Plates engraved and printed by Henky Stone and Son, Ltd., Banbury