Anthony van Dyck

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

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

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

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

Life and work

Family and early life

Anthony van Dyck was born in Antwerp on 22 March 1599 as the seventh of 12 children of his parents. He was baptised the next day in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk (now the Antwerp Cathedral). His father was Francoïs "Frans" van Dijck, a well-to-do silk merchant. His mother, Frans' second wife, was Maria Cupers, the daughter of Dirk Cupers and Catharina Conincx. Anthony was baptised on 23 March 1599 (as Anthonis van Dijck). His parental grandfather, also called Anthoni, had commenced his career as a painter and had been registered in 1556 as a master painter at the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a pupil of Jan Ghendrick, alias van Cleve. The elder brother of Anthony's grandfather was also admitted to the Guild as a master painter and had studied with Geert Ghendrick. He had later become a successful merchant in silk and small writing articles. He had bought the house where Anthony was born, a property known as Den Berendans ('The Bear Dance'), situated on Antwerp's Grote Markt (main square) in 1579. On Anthony's mother's family there were also a several artists who were Guild members.

After the birth of Anthony, his family moved to a house called the Kasteel van Rijssel ('Castle of Lille') in the city's Korte Nieuwstraat. His mother died when he was only 8 years old. At that time the family was living in a more luxurious house in the same street called the Stadt van Ghent ('City of Ghent').

Anthony's artistic talent became evident very early on. When he was 10 years old, he began formal training as a painter with Hendrick van Balen the Elder. Hendrick was a successful painter of small cabinet paintings who had several pupils. It is not known how long Anthony studied with van Balen, with estimates varying from two to four years. While it was common for apprentices to stay on in their master's workshop until they were formally registered as a master in the local guild, van Dyck is believed to have left his master's workshop in 1615 or 1616 to set up his independent workshop before he became a master. The reason was that in that period his father was experiencing financial difficulties and would have needed any assistance he could get. It may have been at this time that the young van Dyck may have started painting the series of panels of Christ and the Apostles in bust-length, although it is also possible that he undertook this only after returning from his first visit to Italy in 1620–21.

By the age of fifteen he was already a highly accomplished artist, as shown by his Self-portrait dated 1613–14. He was admitted to the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a free master on Saint Luke's day, 18 October 1617.

Within a few years he became the chief assistant to Peter Paul Rubens, the leading master painter of Antwerp and indeed of all Northern Europe. Rubens operated a large workshop and often relied on sub-contracted artists. His influence on the young artist was immense and for his part Rubens referred to the nineteen-year-old van Dyck as "the best of my pupils".

The origins and exact nature of the relationship Dyck had with Rubens are unclear. It has been speculated that van Dyck was a pupil of Rubens from about 1613, as even his early work shows little trace of van Balen's style, but there is no clear evidence for this.

Certainly, the dominance of Rubens in Antwerp, a relatively small and declining city, could explain why, despite periodic returns to the city, van Dyck spent most of his career abroad. In 1620, in Rubens's contract for the major commission for the ceiling of the Carolus Borromeuskerk, the Jesuit church at Antwerp (lost to fire in 1718), van Dyck is named as one of the "discipelen" who was to execute the paintings to Rubens' designs. Unlike van Dyck, Rubens worked for most of the courts of Europe, but avoided exclusive attachment to any of them.

Italy

In 1620, at the instigation of George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham, van Dyck went to England for the first time where he worked for King James I of England, receiving £100. It was in London in the collection of the Earl of Arundel that he first saw the work of Titian, whose use of colour and subtle modelling of form would prove transformational, offering a new stylistic language that would enrich the compositional lessons van Dyck had learned from Rubens.

Returned to Flanders after about four months, van Dyke then left in late 1621 for Italy, where he remained for six years. There he studied the Italian masters while starting a successful career as a portraitist. He was already presenting himself as a figure of consequence, annoying the rather bohemian colony of Northern artists in Rome, as Giovan Pietro Bellori recounts, appearing with "the pomp of Zeuxis ... his behaviour was that of a nobleman rather than an ordinary person, and he shone in rich garments. Since he was accustomed in the circle of Rubens to noblemen, and being naturally of elevated mind, and anxious to make himself distinguished, he therefore wore, as well as silks, a hat with feathers and brooches, gold chains across his chest, and was accompanied by servants."

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

For the Genoese aristocracy, at that time enjoying a final flush of prosperity, van Dyke developed a full-length portrait style, drawing on Paolo Veronese and Titian as well as Rubens' style from the latter's own period in Genoa, where extremely tall but graceful figures look down on the viewer with great hauteur. In 1627, van Dyke went back to Antwerp where he remained for five years, painting portraits that were more affable in tone while still making his Flemish patrons look as stylish as possible. A life-size group portrait of twenty-four City Councillors of Brussels which he painted for the council-chamber was destroyed in 1695. Evidently van Dyke was very charming to his patrons, and, like Rubens, well able to mix in aristocratic and court circles, a fact that added to his skill in obtaining commissions. By 1630, he was described as the court painter of the Habsburg Governor of Flanders, the Archduchess Isabella. In this period he also produced many religious works, including large altarpieces, and began his printmaking.

London and death

King Charles I was the most passionate collector of art among the Stuart kings and saw painting as a way of promoting his elevated view of the monarchy. In 1628, Charles bought the fabulous collection that the Duke of Mantua was forced to sell, and from his accession to the throne in 1625 made efforts to bring leading foreign painters to England. In 1626, he was able to persuade Orazio Gentileschi to settle in England, later to be joined by Orazio's daughter, Artemisia, and some of his sons. Charles made a special point of targeting Rubens, who eventually came in 1630 on a diplomatic mission, which included painting, and who later sent Charles further paintings from Antwerp. Rubens was very well-treated during his nine-month visit, during which he was knighted. Charles's court portraitist, Daniel Mytens, was a somewhat pedestrian Dutchman. Moreover, Charles was very short, less than 5 feet (1.5 m) tall, and presented challenges to any portrait artist.

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

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

His Blackfriars studio was frequently visited by the King and Queen (later a special causeway was built to ease their access), who hardly ever sat for another painter as long as van Dyck lived.

So it was that van Dyck was an immediate success in England, where he painted large numbers of portraits of the King and Queen, as well as their children. Many portraits were done in several versions, to be sent as diplomatic gifts or given to supporters of the increasingly embattled king. Altogether van Dyck has been estimated to have painted forty portraits of King Charles himself, as well as about thirty of the Queen, nine of the Earl of Strafford, and multiple ones of other courtiers. He painted many of the court, and also himself and his mistress, Margaret Lemon.

In England van Dyck developed an adapted version of his style which combined a relaxed elegance and ease with an understated authority in his subjects. This style was to dominate English portrait-painting to the end of the 18th century. His portraits of Charles on horseback updated the grandeur of Titian's Equestrian Portrait of Charles V, but even more effective and original is his portrait of Charles dismounted in the Louvre: "Charles is given a totally natural look of instinctive sovereignty, in a deliberately informal setting where he strolls so negligently that he seems at first glance nature's gentleman rather than England's King". Although his portraits have created the classic idea of "Cavalier" style and dress, in fact a majority of his most important patrons in the nobility, such as Lord Wharton and the Earls of Bedford, Northumberland and Pembroke, were to take the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War that broke out soon after the painter's death.

The King in Council by letters patent granted van Dyck denizenship in 1638. On 27 February 1640 he married Mary Ruthven, with whom he had one daughter. Mary was the daughter of Patrick Ruthven, who, although the title was forfeited, styled himself Lord Ruthven. She was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen in 1639–40; this may have been instigated by the King in an attempt to keep van Dyke in England. He had spent most of 1634 in Antwerp, returning the following year, and in 1640–41, as the Civil War loomed, spent several months in Flanders and France. In 1640 he accompanied prince John Casimir of Poland after he was freed from French imprisonment.

A letter dated 13 August 1641, from Lady Roxburghe in England to a correspondent in The Hague, reported that van Dyck was recuperating from a long illness. In November, van Dyck's condition worsened, and he returned to England from Paris, where he had gone to paint Cardinal Richelieu. He died at his home in Blackfriars on 9 December 1641, the same day as the baptism of his new-born daughter Justiniana. He was buried on 11 December, in the choir of St Paul's Cathedral. His body and tomb (erected by the king) were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.