PAST EXHIBITION

Complete Checklist

  • oil painting portrait of old man with mustache and beard with white ruffle collar, circa 1613

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait of a Seventy-Year-Old Man, 1613
    Oil on canvas
    24 3/4 × 17 1/8 in. (63 × 43.5 cm)
    Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België / Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels

    The inscription at the top of this canvas declares it to be the portrait of a man aged seventy and the work of the fourteen-year-old Van Dyck, identified by his monogram, AVD. As such, it is his earliest dated work, and the inscription makes a bold declaration of ambition and pride on the part of a prodigy keenly aware of his gifts. In its coloration and loose manner of painting, the picture brings to mind portraits by Jacopo Tintoretto and may reflect the young Van Dyck’s exposure to Venetian paintings in the collections of Antwerp connoisseurs like his masters Hendrick van Balen and Peter Paul Rubens, before he traveled to Italy himself.

  • head and shoulders oil portrait of a young man in partial profile

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Self-Portrait, ca. 1613–15
    Oil on panel
    10 1/8 × 7 5/8 in. (25.8 × 19.5 cm)
    Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna

    One of Van Dyck’s earliest known works, as well as his first known self-portrait, this painting is dated, on the basis of his appearance, to the first half of the 1610s, when he was about fifteen. The thick application of the paint is different from that of the other early self-portraits. Despite the bold execution, the artist probably considered the painting a finished work. Within decades of his death, it was acquired for the celebrated Viennese collection of the second Prince of Liechtenstein.

  • oil painting of self portrait of Anthony van Dyck, young man, wearing hat, white lace collar and green cloak

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Self-Portrait, ca. 1615–17
    Oil on panel
    14 3/8 × 10 1/8 in. (36.5 × 25.8 cm)
    Rubenshuis, Antwerp

    In recent decades, this portrait has generally been considered to be the work of Van Dyck’s master, Peter Paul Rubens. However, new technical research supports the traditional attribution to Van Dyck. Nonetheless, both the more formal attire and smoother manner of painting, akin to that of Rubens, present a stark contrast to another self-portrait. As Rubens’s most gifted collaborator in the second half of the 1610s, Van Dyck became particularly skilled at adapting his style to that of the older artist.

  • painting of male youth looking to the side, with red curly hair, wearing black

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Head Study of a Youth, ca. 1615–17
    Oil on paper
    20 1/8 × 16 1/4 in. (51.2 × 41.4 cm); original size, 14 × 10 1/2 in. (35.6 × 26.7 cm)
    National Gallery of Art, Washington; Gift of Adolph Caspar Miller

    Although Van Dyck seems to have based the features of the young man on his own, this oil sketch is probably not a self-portrait but rather a tronie (head study) the artist could reuse in his history paintings. Figures with similar heads can be found in several compositions by the young Van Dyck. This sketch was enlarged by a later hand to give it a more finished — and salable — appearance. Oil sketches such as this are regularly recorded in seventeenth-century Flemish collections and attest to the early appreciation of even the more roughly executed examples of Van Dyck’s talent.

  • oil painting of young woman with red hair, looking downward

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Head Study of a Red-Haired Young Woman Looking Down, ca. 1618–20
    Oil on paper
    22 1/4 × 16 3/8 in. (56.5 × 41.6 cm)
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Mrs. Ralph J. Hines, 1957

    Head studies of unknown sitters, an important subcategory of Van Dyck’s early portraits, served as preparatory works that would often be repurposed in historical or devotional compositions. The melancholy young woman shown here provided the prototype for the Virgin in a later painting. Intriguingly, an early biographer also claimed that Van Dyck once recruited his sister Susanna as the model for Mary Magdalene. With her long nose, pallid complexion, and russet hair, the young woman in this sketch does indeed bear a family resemblance to Van Dyck’s own self-portraits.

  • black and red chalk drawing of man wearing cloak, stiff ruffled collar, and holding hat

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of a Standing Man (Alexander Vincque?), 1616 or before
    Black and red chalk on buff paper
    20 3/4 × 13 3/4 in. (52.6 × 35 cm)
    National Gallery of Art, Washington; Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

    This study corresponds closely to the portrait of a merchant in Antwerp traditionally identified as a member of the Vincque family. The somewhat coarse style indicates that the drawing — and thus the painting — must predate Van Dyck’s more refined study of a Jesuit missionary, made in January of 1617. It is therefore probably Van Dyck’s earliest preserved drawing and as such suggests that he had a flourishing practice as a painter well before becoming a master in 1618. The full-length format of the picture attests to the family’s social ambitions and their faith in the capacities of the young artist.

  • black and blue-green chalk sketch of man standing in Chinese costume and hat

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    The Jesuit Nicolas Trigault in Chinese Costume, 1617
    Black chalk and blue-green fabricated chalk
    16 3/4 × 9 5/8 in. (42.4 × 24.4 cm)
    The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

    Like Rubens’s drawing, this sketch must have been made on the occasion of the visit of the Jesuit Nicolas Trigault to Antwerp in January 1617. The two artists probably shared the same piece of blue-green chalk to highlight the collar and hem of the priest’s robe, but otherwise the drawings could not differ more. Apart from the pastel, Van Dyck restricted himself to black chalk and treated the costume and Trigault’s features in a much more summary and angular manner than Rubens. This drawing demonstrates that by age seventeen the artist had completely refined his graphic style.

  • chalk drawing of man standing in Chinese dress robes, with handwritten text

    Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)
    The Jesuit Nicolas Trigault in Chinese Costume, 1617
    Black, red, and white chalk, yellow (fabricated?) chalk and blue-green fabricated chalk, pen and brown ink, on buff (?) paper
    17 1/2 × 9 3/4 in. (44.6 × 24.8 cm)
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, Carl Selden Trust, several members of the Chairman’s Council, Gail and Parker Gilbert, and Lila Acheson Wallace Gifts, 1999

    This magnificent drawing represents Nicolas Trigault, a Flemish Jesuit missionary to China. Rubens, who had close ties to the Jesuits in Antwerp, dated the drawing in January 1617, when Trigault visited the city to raise funds and recruit new missionaries. His costume combines a Korean cap and the robe of a Chinese scholar, conveying the Jesuits’ desire to assimilate into Chinese culture while keeping a certain distance from it. Rubens beautifully captured the cut, texture, and weight of the robe and recorded the sensitive features of the priest. Although the drawing was formerly attributed to Van Dyck, its technique, style, and finish point firmly to Rubens, whose handwriting can be recognized in the Latin inscription describing the missionary’s costume at upper right.

  • oil painting portrait of man in white robe with cropped hair, circa 1618

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait of a Carmelite Friar, ca. 1618
    Oil on panel
    24 1/2 × 18 7/8 in. (62.3 × 48 cm)
    Private collection

    When this painting recently resurfaced, both its provenance and its reputed subject, the confessor of Peter Paul Rubens, supported an attribution to Van Dyck’s master. However, the style points to Van Dyck himself, who by this time was a close collaborator of the older painter. It would be hard to find in Rubens’s oeuvre a parallel for the fragmented rendering of the face, with its thick highlights, touches of pink and black, and use of hatching to evoke the whiskers around the mouth. As in many of his early works, Van Dyck seems to be showing off his precocious technical skill. The painting, which combines sketch-like execution with an attention to the model’s individual features, was most likely made as the portrait of a friend or relative.

  • oil portrait of a man with a beard, wearing black with white lace collar and cuffs

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Frans Snyders, ca. 1620
    Oil on canvas
    56 1/8 × 41 1/2 in. (142.5 × 105.4 cm)
    The Frick Collection; Henry Clay Frick Bequest

    Frans Snyders was celebrated for his paintings of animals and still lifes and counted the king of Spain among his clients. At the end of the 1610s, Van Dyck collaborated with Snyders on several paintings, and these joint projects may have led him to sit for this portrait by Van Dyck, who was approximately twenty years old at the time. A likely occasion for the commission of this and the depiction of Snyders’s wife, Margareta de Vos, was the couple’s purchase of a large house on Antwerp’s most prestigious street, which still survives today. The architectural setting of a terrace overlooking parkland evokes the sitters’ status as wealthy patricians, while locating the portraits in a single space.

  • oil painting of seated woman in back dress with gold, with large white stiff collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Margareta de Vos, ca. 1620
    Oil on canvas
    51 1/2 × 39 1/8 in. (130.7 × 99.3 cm)
    The Frick Collection; Henry Clay Frick Bequest

    Margareta de Vos was the daughter of a distiller and sister of three painters. In Van Dyck’s depiction, De Vos’s gleaming and starched millstone collar would have served as a striking token of prosperity, while his alterations to the composition of her head are now visible to the naked eye. The glass vase of flowers in De Vos’s portrait represents one of the most virtuosic passages in all of Van Dyck’s work, transmuting bold and unerring strokes of blue and buttery yellow paint into reflections on the surface of the vase.

  • oil painting of self portrait of, Anthony van Dyck, young man leaning with ring on pinkie finger

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Self-Portrait, ca. 1620–21
    Oil on canvas
    47 1/8 × 34 5/8 in. (119.7 × 87.9 cm)
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Jules Bache Collection

    Van Dyck produced a number of self-portraits around 1621 that show a marked development in mood, style, and purpose from his earlier self-portraits. While his previous self-portraits are intimate in character, these later works demonstrate the considerable status the young artist had by then achieved. They illustrate to perfection Giovan Pietro Bellori’s description of Van Dyck as appearing "resplendent in rich attire of suits and court dress," and "by nature grand and eager to become famous." This painting may have been made in England during Van Dyck’s short stay in the winter of 1620 and attests to his transformation into a sophisticated courtier.

  • pen and brown ink sketch of man in hat with plume, seated on upright horse, next to man bending over

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of a Man on Horseback with His Groom, 1620–21
    (or 1628–32?)
    Pen and brown ink
    9 1/16 × 9 5/8 in. (23 × 24.5 cm)
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Harold K. Hochschild, 1940

    Throughout his career, Van Dyck proved himself an inventive painter of equestrian portraits. Here, he shows the horse not in profile but turning away from the viewer, an idea developed in the portrait from around 1630 of Albert de Ligne, Count of Arenberg (Holkham Hall), referred to in the inscription at lower left. While the drawing has been related to that painting, the relative finish and robust style suggest that it should be dated before 1621. Because none of the sitters from Van Dyck’s early years in Antwerp hailed from the aristocracy to which this mounted commander clearly belongs, the drawing was probably made during Van Dyck’s stay in England in 1620–21, possibly for a never executed portrait of his main patron then, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

  • brown ink drawing of seated clergyman in headpiece and robe, circa 1623

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Guido Bentivoglio, Seated (?), 1623
    Brush and brown ink over black chalk (and graphite?)
    15 5/8 × 10 3/8 in. (39.6 × 26.3 cm)
    Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris, Petit Palais, Paris

    The most impressive of the few extant drawings for portraits from Van Dyck’s Italian period, this has traditionally been considered a study for the portrait of Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, also in this exhibition. Despite differences in the pose, the thin face with mustache, goatee, and deep-set eyes and the spiky hem of the lace rocchetto help support this identification. The drawing’s size and use of black chalk underdrawing with bold brushwork set it apart from nearly every other portrait drawing by Van Dyck. It could have served to work out the composition, as well as to show his patron the artist’s intentions for the final result.

  • painting of male cleric seated in red robe with white lace in lap, holding paper

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, 1623
    Oil on canvas
    76 3/4 × 57 7/8 in. (195 × 147 cm)
    Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

    One of the masterpieces of seventeenth-century portraiture, Van Dyck’s painting of Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio is renowned for the sensitivity of the sitter’s likeness, the elegance of the pose, the daring of its coloring, and the grandeur of its setting. Bentivoglio, who was also a diplomat, patron of the arts, and historian, lived in Flanders in the early seventeenth century, but Van Dyck made the portrait in 1623 in Rome, where he likely resided at the cardinal’s palace. The painting allowed Van Dyck — while drawing inspiration from Italian models, notably Titian — to assert himself as the leading portraitist of his age. An eighteenth-century source records how "the whole of Rome rushed to see that marvel of art, and everyone wanted to be painted by the hand of our artist."

  • painting of young man wearing black leaning on table, with two men holding statue

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    George Gage with Two Men, ca. 1622–23
    Oil on canvas
    45 1/4 × 44 3/4 in. (115 × 113.5 cm)
    The National Gallery, London

    While Van Dyck may already have met the diplomat and artistic agent George Gage in Rubens’s Antwerp studio, the style and setting of the portrait he made of him indicate it was painted in Rome, where Van Dyck and Gage may have befriended each other. Against a dark landscape, two men present a marble sculpture to the Englishman, whose nonchalant pose evokes his worldliness. Gage was indeed involved in the procurement of ancient statuary for English patrons. The informality of the portrait — evident in the composition, as well as in the varying degrees of finish — contrasts with most of Van Dyck’s Italian portraits, including those of Guido Bentivoglio and the Genoese lady displayed in this gallery.

  • oil painting of woman standing in lavish gold and white dress with large blue collar, next to red curtain and chair

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Genoese Noblewoman, ca. 1625–27
    Oil on canvas
    90 7/8 × 61 5/8 in. (230.8 × 156.5 cm)
    The Frick Collection; Henry Clay Frick Bequest

    Van Dyck spent most of his Italian years in Genoa, a thriving Mediterranean port with an important Flemish community. In the wake of Peter Paul Rubens, who had preceded him there in the first decade of the century, he provided the city’s noble families with grand portraits, many of which still adorn their palaces. This portrait of a luxuriously dressed young woman standing against a loosely defined architectural background is a typical example. Although she remains unidentified, the sash across her torso and the black edges of her cuffs seem to indicate she is a widow.

  • pen and brown ink sketch of standing woman in nun's habit

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Standing Woman in a Nun’s Habit (Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia?), ca. 1627
    Pen and brown ink on paper
    6 3/16 × 4 1/4 in. (15.7 × 10.8 cm)
    Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Helen and Alice Colburn Fund

    Throughout his career, Van Dyck used pen to record initial ideas for portraits, but judging from the rare extant examples, these studies increasingly lost the level of detail of the earlier sheets. Instead, they adopt the more modest appearance exemplified by this sketch. The format indicates a woman of aristocratic or high ecclesiastical standing, possibly Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, daughter of King Philip II of Spain and (with her husband) regent of the Southern Netherlands during the early decades of the century. On becoming a widow in 1621, she joined the order of the Poor Clares, and Van Dyck depicted her (albeit not from life) in her nun’s habit in a full-length portrait of 1628 (Galleria Sabauda, Turin).

  • man on horseback, over woman and person on ground, being crowned by angel

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of a Commander on Horseback Triumphing over Evil, and Crowned by Victory, 1621–ca. 1627
    Pen, brush, and brown ink, with brown wash, over black chalk
    8 1/2 × 7 1/4 in. (21.5 × 18.4 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    This drawing records Van Dyck’s most ambitious equestrian portrait, though the painting it probably prepared never seems to have been executed. A young man, wearing armor and a billowing commander’s sash, tramples with his spirited horse the two personifications of evil, one of which is holding a bunch of snakes. The hero is crowned with laurels by the winged figure of Fame, possibly in reference to a specific military victory. The style and flamboyant composition situate the drawing firmly in Van Dyck’s Italian period. Mostly executed in brush over a sketch in black chalk (still visible in parts), the drawing is a masterly example of Van Dyck’s ability to convey form and intensity of light in a single stroke.

  • black and white chalk drawing of man standing in cloak with sword at side

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of Nicholas Lanier, ca. 1628
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on blue paper
    15 1/2 × 11 3/8 in. (39.4 × 28.8 cm)
    Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh; Lady Murray of Henderland gift 1860 as a memorial of her husband, Lord Murray of Henderland

    According to an early source, Nicholas Lanier claimed to have sat for seven full days for his portrait. In this preparatory drawing, Van Dyck swiftly laid out the fall of fabric in Lanier’s cloak, the play of his curls, his elegant hands, and his almost supercilious expression. Nonetheless, the artist made a number of changes in the final composition. For example, instead of displaying a glove in his right hand, Lanier holds his arm akimbo with the hand tucked invisibly at his side. Less obviously, Van Dyck removed a curling lock of hair to leave Lanier’s temple exposed.

  • oil painting of man with beard, dressed in orange and white with black covering, with hand on sword

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Nicholas Lanier, ca. 1628
    Oil on canvas
    43 3/4 × 34 1/2 in. (111 × 87.6 cm)
    Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

    Nicholas Lanier was a musician, painter, and composer born in London to a family of French and Italian extraction. In 1626, he was named master of the king’s music to Charles I, and this portrait may have first brought Van Dyck into royal favor. Lanier also acquired a reputation as a painter and connoisseur of the arts, and Charles I entrusted him with the complicated negotiations for the purchase of the art collections of the Duke of Mantua. This portrait was displayed in Charles’s palace at Whitehall; when the king’s collections were sold after his execution, Lanier acquired the portrait for himself.

  • black chalk and ink drawing of woman seated in dress, next to seated child

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of Anna van Thielen and Her Daughter, Anna Maria Rombouts, ca. 1631–32
    Black chalk, pen, and brown ink
    12 1/2 × 10 5/16 in. (31.7 × 26.2 cm)
    The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

    This drawing prepared one of a pair of portraits of the Antwerp painter Theodoor Rombouts and his wife Anna van Thielen, who posed with their daughter, Anna Maria. The sitters belonged to the circle of Van Dyck’s colleagues and friends in Antwerp. Anna’s brother was a successful flower painter, as was her niece. The knee-length format is reminiscent of the traditional sixteenth-century portrait type that had remained popular in Antwerp. Anna’s expression, with its lifted eyebrow, makes for a forthright and engaging likeness.

  • black and white chalk drawing of woman in dress on paper with top corners cut

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of Henrietta of Lorraine, 1634
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on light gray (formerly blue) paper
    22 5/8 × 12 in. (57.3 × 30.2 cm)
    Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh; David Laing Bequest to the Royal Scottish Academy

    While in Brussels in 1634, Van Dyck painted portraits of Henrietta and Marguerite of Lorraine, sisters who had sought refuge there following Marguerite’s clandestine marriage to Gaston, Duke of Orleans and younger brother of Louis XIII of France. Here, the artist used rapid strokes of black chalk and white heightening (the latter now largely abraded) to document the fall of fabric in the sitter’s gown, the angle of her body, and the position of her hands. He often used blue paper from his years in Italy on, as is evident from several other sheets. While he paid close attention to the bulbous sleeves, lace cuffs, and narrowly tapering stomacher, his rendering of the sitter’s face is almost cartoonish and bears little resemblance to her appearance in the final painting.

  • black and white chalk sketch of woman in dress, with sketch of hands, circa 1628

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of a Lady, with Studies of Her Hands, ca. 1628–34
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on gray-green (formerly blue) paper
    19 7/8 × 11 13/16 in. (50.5 × 30 cm)
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Bequest of Walter C. Baker, 1971

    Van Dyck’s sitters are famous for their elegant, slender hands, yet he very rarely made studies of them. One exception is this drawing. It has long been described as preparatory to a painting of an unidentified sitter in Munich, but a comparison suggests that Van Dyck saw portrait drawings as general guides rather than models to be precisely followed. The drawing has a nearly complete history of ownership in the collections of nine painters.

  • black chalk drawing of man seated, wearing cloak

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Cesare Alessandro Scaglia, Seated, ca. 1634
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on brown paper
    19 1/8 × 12 3/4 in. (48.6 × 32.4 cm)
    Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris

    The abbot and diplomat Cesare Alessandro Scaglia was one of Van Dyck’s most important private patrons. This drawing, which prepared a large, full-length portrait, may represent a design that was abandoned. In the final version, Scaglia leans against a pillar, whereas here he appears seated, as though enthroned, holding a document in one hand. The choice of buff (coarser, light brown) paper is not unusual in the portrait sketches of Van Dyck’s later period. As did blue paper, it provided the artist with a middle tone for the black and white chalks with which he sketched the pose, to guide his subsequent work on the painting.

  • oil painting of man knelt in prayer at lap of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Cesare Scaglia Adoring the Virgin and Child, ca. 1634–35
    Oil on canvas
    42 × 47 1/4 in. (106.7 × 120 cm)
    The National Gallery, London

    Cesare Alessandro Scaglia, the scion of a noble Piedmontese family, was made an abbot as a child but devoted his life to a diplomatic career that took him to courts across Europe. He spent his last years as an exile in Flanders, where he commissioned many portraits and devotional works from Van Dyck. This image of the abbot adoring the Virgin and Child is remarkable for the portrait-like depiction of the Virgin, who bears a striking resemblance to Marie-Claire de Croÿ, as depicted in a portrait also in this exhibition. Unfortunately, no documentation has yet explained a connection between the duchess and Scaglia. A preparatory study for this painting is displayed here.

  • painting of woman standing in lavish black and gray dress with child wearing red dress at side

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Marie-Claire de Croÿ with Her Son Philippe-Eugène, 1634
    Oil on canvas
    82 1/2 × 48 1/2 in. (208.7 × 123.2 cm)
    Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Roscoe and Margaret Oakes Collection

    Descended from one of the most ancient noble families in the Southern Netherlands, Marie-Claire de Croÿ was created Duchess of Havré in her own right by the king of Spain upon her marriage to a cousin in 1627. The child who appears alongside her is likely Philippe-Eugène, the future bishop of Valencia. The painting provides a sterling example of the grandiose and richly colored court portraits of Van Dyck’s second Antwerp period and makes use of a recurrent formula of juxtaposing an elegant female sitter with a diminutive male companion.

  • black and white drawing of man standing wearing armor, holding button

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Johann of Nassau-Siegen, Standing, Wearing Armor,  ca. 1634
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on blue paper
    The British Museum, London

    Briefly returning to the Southern Netherlands in 1634, Van Dyck busied himself with portraits of Brussels courtiers. These included two portraits of Johann VIII, Count of Nassau-Siegen, a territory of the Holy Roman Empire. The count was a Catholic convert who served as a general for the Hapsburgs in the Southern Netherlands, at war with his own Protestant family. In the portrait that this sketch prepares, Johann appears as a military commander, wearing armor that is the focus of Van Dyck’s sketch, its sheen skillfully evoked by a few highlights in white chalk.

  • two black and white chalk sketches of man with folded collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Two Studies of Cesare Alessandro Scaglia, ca. 1634
    Black chalk on blue paper
    20 1/16 × 13 5/16 in. (50.9 x 33.8 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    Van Dyck made these two studies of the diplomat Cesare Alessandro Scaglia in preparation for the painting of the sitter in adoration of the Virgin and Child.

  • black and white chalk drawing of man seated, wearing cloak, with bowties tied under each knee

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Johann of Nassau-Siegen, Seated, ca. 1634
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on blue paper
    20 1/16 × 13 5/16 in. (50.9 x 33.8 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    In addition to a portrait of the count in armor, Van Dyck also painted a monumental group portrait of Johann of Nassau-Siegen with his family. The couple appear seated on a dais, flanked by four of their children. As in most of his portrait drawings, Van Dyck focused on the pose and costume of his sitter, barely indicating the face. In the finished painting, Van Dyck altered Johann’s left hand, so that the count seems to be pointing at his son and heir, Johann Franz Desideratus.

  • black and white chalk drawing of woman in dress, holding hand of young boy at her side

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Ernestine Yolande, Countess of Nassau-Siegen, Seated, with Her Son, Johann Franz Desideratus
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on blue paper
    The British Museum, London

    Ernestine Yolande, Countess of Nassau-Siegen, was the daughter of Lamoral, Prince of Ligne. As with his study of the seated count, Van Dyck made this sketch in preparation for a massive family portrait. In the final painting, the countess cradles a lapdog, a symbol of marital fidelity. This attribute, however, is absent from the sketch, which focuses on the folds and highlights of the countess’s gown. Once he had finished drawing the dress, Van Dyck overlaid it with rough indications of her young son.

  • black and white chalk drawing, portrait of man in cloak, with large collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of Quintijn Simons, ca. 1634
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on blue paper
    17 1/2 × 11 in. (44.3 × 28 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    This sketch depicts the little-known painter Quintijn Simons, whom Van Dyck portrayed in a painting. In the inscription of a print after this picture, he is described as a "Brussels history painter," but this claim cannot be substantiated by any surviving work. As with many other such sketches, Van Dyck drew on both sides of this sheet. 

  • painting of blindfolded Justice seated surrounded by seven seated men

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Justice Flanked by Seven Magistrates of the City of Brussels, ca. 1634
    Oil on panel, squared in oil
    10 3/8 × 23 in. (26.3 × 58.5 cm)
    École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris

    In August 1695, a French bombardment largely destroyed the famous town hall of Brussels and its art collections, including two large group portraits by Van Dyck depicting the city’s magistrates. The second of these compositions is recorded in this oil sketch, which depicts seven of the city’s magistrates flanking the figure of Justice. The compositional sketch was squared in the wet paint to enlarge the design (the final canvas may have measured as much as ten by twenty-six feet) and supplemented by studies in black and white chalk of costume and pose, as well as detailed head studies of the individual figures.

  • painting of man looking right, with beard and mustache, wearing white stiff collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of a Man, Facing Right, ca. 1634
    Oil on canvas, with paper extensions on each side
    25 × 19 1/2 in. (63.5 × 49.5 cm)
    Private collection

    A group of five head studies in oil on canvas survive for a now destroyed group portrait of Brussels magistrates, some of which can be related to figures in the composition sketch. This study, for instance, may represent the second man from the left in the sketch. The number of sitters and the large scale of the final painting must have made it hard to paint directly from life on the canvas, as was Van Dyck’s probable method when working on smaller portraits.

  • oil painting of man's face looking left, with beard, wearing white stiff collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of a Man, Looking Left, ca. 1634
    Oil on canvas
    21 3/4 × 17 3/4 in. (55.3 × 45.1 cm)
    Private collection

    The head studies connected with the commission of a large painting for the Brussels town hall offer a rare opportunity to examine how Van Dyck worked with the model before him. While the level of information on the sitter’s appearance exceeds that of most of the artist’s portrait drawings, they appear to have been done quickly, in short sessions, offering a lively likeness. The example shown here only resurfaced in 2000, as part of the British Broadcasting Company’s Antiques Roadshow.

  • self portrait etching of Anthony Van Dyck, depicting man's face with curly hair and mustache at top of page

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Self-Portrait, ca. 1627–35
    Etching (first state)
    9 5/8 × 6 1/8 in. (24.4 × 15.6 cm)
    The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

    A masterpiece of seventeenth-century printmaking, Van Dyck’s etched self-portrait is as remarkable for its technique as for its unfinished appearance. The painter’s handsome features float at the top of a sheet that is otherwise empty, save for the light scratches in the copper plate from which it was pulled. The state would not have been considered final by any standard of the time, but it is clear from the surviving impressions that it was marketed and appreciated as an exceptional work of art. The plate was later finished with a burin to serve as the frontispiece of the earliest known edition of the Iconographie.

  • engraving of Anthony van Dyck with short curly hair and mustache, looking over shoulder, depicted as bust on pedestal with inscription

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) and Jacob Neefs (1610–1660)
    Anthony van Dyck, ca. 1644
    Etching and engraving (third state)
    In Icones Principum . . . (Antwerp, 1645 or 1646), bound in gold-stamped seventeenth-century calfskin
    Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

    For the earliest known edition of the Iconographie, published by Gillis Hendricx in 1645, Van Dyck’s unfinished etched self-portrait was made into a frontispiece by the engraver Jacob Neefs, the head transformed into a marble bust placed on a pedestal and inscribed with the edition’s title (“One Hundred Images of Princes, Scholars, Painters,” etc.). The copy shown here is one of the few preserved in a seventeenth-century binding. The painted portrait that Van Dyck originally intended to make into a print was later engraved by Lucas Vorsterman. In it, the artist wears a gold chain that may be the one awarded to him by Charles I in 1633.

  • engraving of Anthony van Dyck with short curly hair and mustache, looking over shoulder, wearing cloak, chain over back and lace collar

    Lucas Vorsterman the Elder (1595/96–1674/75) after Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Anthony van Dyck, ca. 1635
    Engraving (fourth state)
    9 7/8 × 6 1/4 in. (25.1 × 15.8 cm)
    Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris

    For the earliest known edition of the Iconographie, published by Gillis Hendricx in 1645, Van Dyck’s unfinished etched self-portrait was made into a frontispiece by the engraver Jacob Neefs, the head transformed into a marble bust placed on a pedestal and inscribed with the edition’s title ("One Hundred Images of Princes, Scholars, Painters," etc.). The copy shown here is one of the few preserved in a seventeenth-century binding. The painted portrait that Van Dyck originally intended to make into a print was later engraved by Lucas Vorsterman. In it, the artist wears a gold chain that may be the one awarded to him by Charles I in 1633.

  • black chalk drawing of portrait of man in lace collar, cloak, mustache and beard

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Hendrick van Balen, 1627–32
    Black chalk
    9 5/8 × 7 3/4 in. (24.3 × 19.8 cm)
    The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

    The rolls of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke for the year 1610 list Van Dyck as an apprentice with the guild’s dean, the painter Hendrick van Balen. Nearly two decades later, Van Dyck focused his attention on his teacher’s craggy face and wispy hair, only roughing out his costume and hands. In a grisaille oil sketch at Boughton House, Van Dyck subsequently fleshed out this composition, clarifying the sculpted head on which Van Balen rests his hand and situating him in front of a column. The inventory of Van Balen’s widow lists a number of plaster casts after antique sculptures; these may have inspired the one included in this portrait.

  • black chalk drawing of old man looking left wearing ruffled collar, cloak

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Pieter Brueghel the Younger, ca. 1627–35
    Black chalk
    9 5/8 × 7 3/4 in. (24.5 × 19.8 cm)
    The Duke of Devonshire and the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, Chatsworth, Derbyshire

    The son and namesake of the greatest Netherlandish painter of the sixteenth century, Pieter Brueghel the Younger devoted his career to producing a vast number of copies and variations of his father’s work. Van Dyck made two drawings of Brueghel to prepare a print for the Iconographie series. In the drawing shown here, Brueghel appears in three-quarter profile, turned away from the viewer, clasping his cloak to his chest. The final print, based on a drawing now in Saint Petersburg (State Hermitage Museum), brings Brueghel’s hands closer together and positions him frontally, directing his gaze outward. Van Dyck adopted this latter pose for an etching, which he executed himself and endowed with the swift quality of a pen sketch.

  • etching of old man wearing cloak and large ruffled collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Pieter Brueghel the Younger, ca. 1627–35
    Etching (first state)
    9 5/8 × 6 1/8 in. (24.4 × 15.6 cm)
    Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; Gift of Walter C. Klein

    The son and namesake of the greatest Netherlandish painter of the sixteenth century, Pieter Brueghel the Younger devoted his career to producing a vast number of copies and variations of his father’s work. Van Dyck made two drawings of Brueghel to prepare a print for the Iconographie series. In the drawing shown here, Brueghel appears in three-quarter profile, turned away from the viewer, clasping his cloak to his chest. The final print, based on a drawing now in Saint Petersburg (State Hermitage Museum), brings Brueghel’s hands closer together and positions him frontally, directing his gaze outward. Van Dyck adopted this latter pose for an etching, which he executed himself and endowed with the swift quality of a pen sketch.

  • painting of man with long curly hair, wearing buttoned shirt, large collar, cloak and gloves

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Adriaen Brouwer, ca. 1634
    Oil on panel
    8 1/2 × 6 3/4 in. (21.6 × 17.2 cm)
    The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry KBE, Boughton House, Northamptonshire

    The work of the painter Adriaen Brouwer, whose subjects were often drawn from low-life and taverns, was sought after by the most discerning collectors of his time, including Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt. Van Dyck’s grisaille was probably made in 1634, when Brouwer was living with Van Dyck’s frequent collaborator, the printmaker Paulus Pontius. It served as the model for an engraving by Schelte Adamsz. Bolswert.

  • black chalk drawing of man wearing cloak and large ruffle collar, holding portfolio wrap

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Gaspar de Crayer, ca. 1627–35
    Black chalk
    9 5/8 × 7 1/2 in. (24.3 × 19 cm)
    The Duke of Devonshire and the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, Chatsworth, Derbyshire

    The painter Gaspar de Crayer dominated the market for altarpieces in seventeenth-century Brussels. Van Dyck’s drawing is highly finished, but for his engraving, Paulus Pontius worked instead from an intermediary grisaille, the tonal richness of which could communicate Van Dyck’s intentions better than a chalk drawing. De Crayer holds a portfolio in the drawing, which Pontius reworked as part of the cape slung over the sitter’s right shoulder. It is not clear if Van Dyck intended the portfolio to melt away into De Crayer’s robes in the sketch or if Pontius simply misread the dark lower part of the grisaille. The portfolio, a reference to De Crayer’s art, may have seemed too vulgar an attribute for a socially ambitious artist whose career progressed from a seat on the Brussels council in 1627 to an appointment at the archducal court in 1635.

  • oil painting in brown tones of man wearing cloak and lace collar and bundle in hand

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Gaspar de Crayer, ca. 1627–35
    Oil on panel
    The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry KBE, Boughton House, Northamptonshire

    The painter Gaspar de Crayer dominated the market for altarpieces in seventeenth-century Brussels. Van Dyck’s drawing is highly finished, but for his engraving, Paulus Pontius worked instead from an intermediary grisaille, the tonal richness of which could communicate Van Dyck’s intentions better than a chalk drawing. De Crayer holds a portfolio in the drawing, which Pontius reworked as part of the cape slung over the sitter’s right shoulder. It is not clear if Van Dyck intended the portfolio to melt away into De Crayer’s robes in the sketch or if Pontius simply misread the dark lower part of the grisaille. The portfolio, a reference to De Crayer’s art, may have seemed too vulgar an attribute for a socially ambitious artist whose career progressed from a seat on the Brussels council in 1627 to an appointment at the archducal court in 1635.

  • black chalk drawing of man looking left with beard, wearing large stiff collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Manuel Frockas, 1631–32 (?)
    Black chalk
    9 5/8 × 7 7/8 in.
    The Duke of Devonshire and the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, Chatsworth, Derbyshire

    Van Dyck’s Iconographie series of prints includes three Spanish generals whose military careers brought them to Flanders, among them, Manuel Frockas, Count of Feria. Simplicity of composition and relatively cursory execution distinguish these generals’ portrait drawings, likely all made from life in 1631–32. While the drawings appear to depict the sitters in civilian dress, the later oil sketches and engravings show them in full armor, each holding a commander’s baton. Like the hands that enliven the compositions, these features were probably all added from memory or invented by the artist.

  • oil painting in brown tones, of man in armor holding staff

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Manuel Frockas, 1631–32 (?)
    Oil on panel
    8 1/4 × 6 1/4 in. (21 × 15.9 cm)
    The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry KBE, Boughton House, Northamptonshire

    Van Dyck’s Iconographie series of prints includes three Spanish generals whose military careers brought them to Flanders, among them, Manuel Frockas, Count of Feria. Simplicity of composition and relatively cursory execution distinguish these generals’ portrait drawings, likely all made from life in 1631–32. While the drawings appear to depict the sitters in civilian dress, the later oil sketches and engravings show them in full armor, each holding a commander’s baton. Like the hands that enliven the compositions, these features were probably all added from memory or invented by the artist.

  • black chalk drawing of old man with pointed beard, wearing cloak and large folded collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Orazio Gentileschi, ca. 1635
    Black chalk, gray wash, pen and brown ink; incised for transfer
    9 3/8 × 7 in. (24 × 17.9 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    In the early years of the seventeenth century, Orazio Gentileschi worked as a painter in Rome, where he came under the influence of Caravaggio. His career then took him to Turin, Genoa, Paris, and finally the court of Charles I in London, where he was joined by his daughter, Artemisia, also a painter. Van Dyck shows the artist, who was known for his difficult personality, looking out at the viewer in a surly manner. The general composition seems to have been based on Italian prototypes, the work of Titian above all, present in the collections of Charles I in London.

  • black chalk drawing of man looking left, wearing buttoned shirt, with hand on book

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Gaspar Gevaerts, ca. 1627–35
    Black chalk, incised for transfer
    10 5/8 in. × 7 1/2 in. (27 × 19 cm)
    Albertina, Vienna

    Better known by his Latinized name Gevartius, Gaspar Gevaerts was a preeminent philologist and historian, serving as secretary of Antwerp for four decades. In the drawing, preparatory to an engraving by Paulus Pontius for the series known as the Iconographie, Van Dyck alludes to Gevaerts’s scholarly endeavors with a single book. He renders the face in exquisite focus while rapidly sketching elements of dress and pose with thicker lines. Although the drawing is incised for transfer to the engraver’s plate, Pontius worked from Van Dyck’s later oil sketch for Gevaerts’s final pose and costume. In the oil sketch, Van Dyck trimmed the sitter’s collar with lace and added a fur-lined cape, slung partly over the left arm. The modification lends Gevaerts’s slender figure a more robust aspect; the cape also refers to his public office.

  • oil painting in brown tones of man wearing buttoned shirt, fur and lace collar and hand in book

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Gaspar Gevaerts, ca. 1627–35
    Oil on panel
    8 1/4 × 6 1/2 in. (24.8 × 18.7 cm)
    The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry KBE, Boughton House, Northamptonshire

    Better known by his Latinized name Gevartius, Gaspar Gevaerts was a preeminent philologist and historian, serving as secretary of Antwerp for four decades. In the drawing preparatory to an engraving by Paulus Pontius for the series known as the Iconographie, Van Dyck alludes to Gevaerts’s scholarly endeavors with a single book. He renders the face in exquisite focus while rapidly sketching elements of dress and pose with thicker lines. Although the drawing is incised for transfer to the engraver’s plate, Pontius worked from Van Dyck’s later oil sketch for Gevaerts’s final pose and costume. In the oil sketch, Van Dyck trimmed the sitter’s collar with lace and added a fur-lined cape, slung partly over the left arm. The modification lends Gevaerts’s slender figure a more robust aspect; the cape also refers to his public office.

  • black chalk and ink drawing of man looking left wearing buttoned shirt, cloak, cap, and holding paper

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Inigo Jones, 1632–36
    Black chalk, pen and brown ink; squared for transfer in black chalk
    9 5/8 × 7 7/8 in. (24.4 × 20.1 cm)
    The Duke of Devonshire and the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, Chatsworth, Derbyshire

    Inigo Jones worked as a theatrical designer throughout the reigns of James I and Charles I while also assuming the role of Surveyor of the King’s Works in 1615. The projects he carried out while in this capacity, including the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace and the piazza at Covent Garden, furthered Jones’s introduction of a Palladian classicism to English architecture. In this drawing, likely not made from life but based by Van Dyck on an earlier portrait, Jones appears behind a parapet, holding a sheet of paper in an allusion to his gifts as a draftsman. The drawing is squared for transfer, and the engraver Robert van Voerst followed it closely in his print for the series known as the Iconographie.

  • etching of old man wearing cloak, with mountains in background

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Joos de Momper the Younger, ca. 1627–35
    Etching (first state)
    9 5/8 × 6 1/8 in. (24.4 × 15.6 cm)
    The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

    The painter Joos de Momper specialized in mountainous landscapes. In the portrait at right, Van Dyck’s etching technique — consisting of stippling, lines alternatingly scratchy or fluent, and areas of dense hatching — conveys the varied textures of the wrinkled skin, curly hair, leather glove, and rugged landscape. Probably to preserve Van Dyck’s original, the plate was not finished with the burin in later states, but a completely new print was made by the engraver Lucas Vorsterman. The state shown here of this second plate bears the address of Martinus van den Eynden, the first recorded publisher of the Iconographie.

  • engraving of portrait of old man with draped clothing and gloved hand, with caption

    Lucas Vorsterman the Elder (1595/96–1674/75) after Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Joos de Momper the Younger, ca. 1627–35
    Etching and engraving (third state)
    9 × 6 1/8 in. (23 × 15.6 cm)
    Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris

    The painter Joos de Momper specialized in mountainous landscapes. In the portrait at right, Van Dyck’s etching technique — consisting of stippling, lines alternatingly scratchy or fluent, and areas of dense hatching — conveys the varied textures of the wrinkled skin, curly hair, leather glove, and rugged landscape. Probably to preserve Van Dyck’s original, the plate was not finished with the burin in later states, but a completely new print was made by the engraver Lucas Vorsterman. The state shown here of this second plate bears the address of Martinus van den Eynden, the first recorded publisher of the Iconographie.

  • etching of man with mustache wearing buttoned shirt with collar, and cloak

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) and an Unidentified Engraver
    Paulus Pontius, ca. 1627–30
    Etching (second state)
    9 1/8 × 7 1/4 in. (23.3 × 18.3 cm
    Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

    Van Dyck’s most fully worked-out etching depicts one of his main engravers with the costume and swagger of a gentleman. In this second state of the print, an unidentified engraver added hatching in the background, but Van Dyck’s masterful graphic treatment of the subject — despite scratches in the plate and other small technical accidents — can still be fully appreciated. Even more than the painting on which it was based, the print takes advantage of the contrast between the sitter’s dark hair and his pale complexion, and between the slashed black doublet and the white linen visible underneath it. Another portrait of Pontius after Van Dyck, which the former engraved himself, is shown here.

  • engraving of portrait of man in profile with draped clothing and lace collar, with caption

    Paulus Pontius (1603–1658) after Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Paulus Pontius, ca. 1627–35
    Engraving (fifth state)
    9 5/8 × 7 1/8 in. (24.6 × 18.2 cm)
    Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris

    Paulus Pontius was a prolific engraver whose collaboration with Peter Paul Rubens, Van Dyck, and other artists resulted in some of the best engravings published in seventeenth-century Flanders. He contributed more plates to Van Dyck’s Iconographie than any other printmaker. Probably made a few years after an earlier portrait, of which a largely etched state is also on view in this gallery, this completely engraved print differs not only in the more established appearance of the sitter but also in the smooth finish. Through hatching and crosshatching, Pontius, who engraved the print himself, created the gradations in tone so valued in engravings at the time, most subtly in his face and hand.

  • black chalk portrait drawing of man with lace collar, with hand on lap, circa 1628

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Jan van Ravesteyn, 1628–29 or 1632
    Black chalk
    10 × 7 7/8 in. (25.3 × 20.1 cm)
    Albertina, Vienna

    Jan van Ravesteyn was a portrait painter active in The Hague, and Van Dyck likely drew him when he was there working on important commissions from stadholder Frederick Henry. Van Dyck’s sympathetic portrait depicts Van Ravesteyn, who was around sixty, with great dignity. The artist probably worked from life, using a sharp piece of chalk that allowed for sufficient detail to draw the head and the intricate patterns formed by the layers of the linen ruff, while the outline of Van Ravesteyn’s body is indicated more broadly.

  • black chalk drawing of man seated, wearing stiff collar and hand on sculpture

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Nicolaas Rockox, ca. 1627–35
    Black chalk
    11 3/4 × 8 1/2 in. (30.2 × 21.7 cm)
    Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Royal Collection, Windsor

    This drawing, almost certainly made from life, provided the prototype for Van Dyck’s grisaille of Nicolaas Rockox, the Antwerp mayor who was an important patron of the artist. It accords with one characteristic type of portrait sketch in Van Dyck’s oeuvre: entirely in black chalk, with a detailed rendering of physiognomy and rougher indications of dress and attributes. Rockox’s left hand rests on a large sculpted head, probably representing Minerva, goddess of wisdom. With his right hand, he points straight at her forehead. This attribute was later eliminated from the painted and engraved versions of Van Dyck’s portrait. The drawing was perhaps intended as a prototype for a never executed print in the Iconographie series.

  • circular oil painting portrait of  man with beard wearing white stiff collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Nicolaas Rockox, 1636
    Oil on panel
    diam. 6 in. (15.2 cm)
    Collection Howard and Nancy Marks

    Unlike the other grisailles, Van Dyck’s portrait of Nicolaas Rockox, a towering figure in the political and cultural life of Antwerp, has an unusual round format. It was likely painted for Rockox’s own collection and reflected his interest in ancient coins. Paulus Pontius’s engraving meanwhile embellishes the portrait with an architectural framework and Latin verses by Gaspar Gevaerts that praise Rockox for his unwavering service and indifference to power. These features depart from the Iconographie series and indicate that the engraving was intended to circulate independently.

  • engraving of man in profile with ruffle collar, in oval frame with lettering, and caption

    Paulus Pontius (1603–1658) after Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Nicolaas Rockox, 1639
    Engraving (first state)
    10 1/2 × 7 1/8 in. (26.7 × 18.2 cm)
    Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris

    Unlike the other grisailles shown here, Van Dyck’s portrait of Nicolaas Rockox, a towering figure in the political and cultural life of Antwerp, has an unusual round format. It was likely painted for Rockox’s own collection and reflected his interest in ancient coins. Paulus Pontius’s engraving meanwhile embellishes the portrait with an architectural framework and Latin verses by Gaspar Gevaerts that praise Rockox for his unwavering service and indifference to power. These features depart from the Iconographie series and indicate that the engraving was intended to circulate independently.

  • etching in first state of man with beard and mustache and lace collar at top of sheet

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Frans Snyders, ca. 1627–35
    Etching (first state)
    9 5/8 × 6 1/8 in. (24.4 × 15.6 cm)
    Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; Gift of Walter C. Klein, Class of 1939

    As in his own self-portrait, Van Dyck etched only the head of the still-life painter Frans Snyders in this print, basing it on the portrait in The Frick Collection. It may be the only plate in Van Dyck’s Iconographie series for which it can be shown that the painting preceded the print by several years. More than the print’s final version, finished with the burin by the engraver Jacob Neefs, the etched state brings out the aloof distinction with which Van Dyck depicted his colleague.

  • black chalk drawing of man, Hendrick van Steenwijck,  with lace cuffs pointing at sheet, circa 1932

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Hendrick van Steenwijck the Younger, ca. 1632−38
    Black chalk, gray wash; incised for transfer
    10 3/4 × 8 1/4 in. (27.2 × 20.9 cm)
    Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

    This depiction of Hendrick van Steenwijck the Younger, a painter of imaginary architectural views, is one of Van Dyck’s most accomplished portrait drawings. Deep shadows enhance the sitter’s strong features, long curls and facial hair, the nervous line of the lace ruffs around his wrists, and the strong gestures of his hands. Although blank, both in the drawing and in Paulus Pontius’s faithful engraving after it, the sheet of paper must refer to Van Steenwijck’s mastery as a perspectival draftsman. A fellow native of Antwerp, Van Steenwijck probably sat for Van Dyck in London, where the former had been based since 1615.

  • black chalk drawing, portrait of man with ruffle collar, curly hair and mustache and beard

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Lucas Vorsterman, ca. 1631 (?)
    Black chalk
    9 3/4 × 7 in. (24.4 × 17.9 cm)
    The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

    Van Dyck’s brooding portrait of the engraver Lucas Vorsterman has colored the latter’s reputation, along with anecdotal evidence for his instability, aggression, and hostile relationship with Peter Paul Rubens. Van Dyck knew Vorsterman well from the period when both were working under Rubens’s supervision, and he may have learned how to etch from him. In his autograph print, Van Dyck amplified the nervous energy of his chalk drawing. A second portrait of Vorsterman engraved after Van Dyck is displayed here.

  • etching of portrait of man with ruffle collar, curly hair and mustache and beard

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Lucas Vorsterman, ca. 1631 (?)
    Etching (first state)
    15 3/4 × 10 3/4 in. (40.1 × 27.2 cm)
    The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

    Van Dyck’s brooding portrait of the engraver Lucas Vorsterman has colored the latter’s reputation, along with anecdotal evidence for his instability, aggression, and hostile relationship with Peter Paul Rubens. Van Dyck knew Vorsterman well from the period when both were working under Rubens’s supervision, and he may have learned how to etch from him. In his autograph print, Van Dyck amplified the nervous energy of his chalk drawing. A second portrait of Vorsterman engraved after Van Dyck is on view in the Cabinet.

  • engraving of man in black cloak with mustache and beard, and caption

    Lucas Vorsterman the Younger (1624–1666 or later) after Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Lucas Vorsterman the Elder, ca. 1650 (?)
    Engraving (fourth state)
    9 7/8 × 7 in. (25 × 17.8 cm)
    Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris

    Lucas Vorsterman was a major figure in seventeenth-century Flemish art, both as a printmaker and as a publisher. His close collaboration with Peter Paul Rubens ended when the two artists fell out, opening the way for Vorsterman to pursue independent success. The present print, made by the engraver’s son after an unknown model by Van Dyck, captures the complex and haughty nature of its subject. An etched portrait of Vorsterman by Van Dyck is also known, of which an impression is exhibited downstairs, together with the drawing that served as its model.

  • black chalk drawing of man in profile with mustache and beard, wearing lace collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Sebastiaan Vrancx, ca. 1628–31
    Black chalk
    10 1/16 × 7 3/8 in. (25.6 × 18.7 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    Mainly known for his small landscape paintings and drawings featuring battles and robberies, Sebastiaan Vrancx was also a book illustrator, poet, playwright, and member of Antwerp’s militia. Van Dyck’s drawing of Vrancx appears to have been made from life: apart from his face and right sleeve, the draftsmanship is not very detailed. In a gesture toward Vrancx’s military duties, his right hand emphasizes his sword, of which only the summarily indicated hilt is visible. The drawing probably did not serve as the direct model for the printmaker, whose plate would have required the more detailed guidance of an oil sketch.

  • black drawing with brown highlights of man with large ruffle collar, draped clothing, and mustache and beard

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Jan Wildens, ca. 1627–32
    Black chalk, light and dark gray and brown washes; incised for transfer
    9 1/8 × 7 7/8 in. (23.3 × 20 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    The painter Jan Wildens, who was also active as an art dealer, specialized in wooded landscapes. He is known for collaborating on the backgrounds of other artists’ works, notably those of Peter Paul Rubens and possibly Van Dyck as well. In this drawing, the initial sketch in black chalk is finished with large areas of wash in order to model the figure. The outlines are incised for transfer onto the copper plate, which was engraved by Paulus Pontius, likely without the mediation of a grisaille on panel.

  • etching and engraving of man with beard and mustached wearing cloak with fur and chain, and folded collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), with additional etching and engraving attributed to Lucas Vorsterman the Elder (1595/96–1674/75)
    Jan van den Wouwer, 1632 (?)
    Etching and engraving (second state)
    9 3/4 × 6 1/4 in. (24.9 × 15.8 cm)
    Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

    Van Dyck must have met the distinguished lawyer and philologist Jan van den Wouwer in Peter Paul Rubens’s circle and may have portrayed him before leaving for Italy in 1621. A later painting (Pushkin Museum, Moscow), in which Van den Wouwer wears a cloak trimmed with leopard skin and a golden chain, was the basis for this print. Its first, purely etched state is believed to be by Van Dyck. In the second state, shown here, an engraver, possibly Lucas Vorsterman, modeled the face more thoroughly with fine burin lines, refining the print with a wonderful luster.

  • engraving of portrait of man standing in armor, with lace collar, holding baton and text below

    Paulus Pontius (1603–1658) after Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Stadholder Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, ca. 1638 (?)
    Engraving (third state)
    19 × 13 1/2 in. (48.3 × 34.2 cm)
    Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris

    Fredrick Henry, Prince of Orange and stadholder of the Dutch Republic between 1625 and 1647, became an important patron of Van Dyck’s after the artist’s return from Italy in 1628. The history paintings he commissioned speak to his ambition to raise the artistic prestige of his court, and the portraits were the first Van Dyck made for a head of state and his family. Here, Paulus Pontius’s polished engraving technique skillfully translates the tone and color of Van Dyck’s painted portrait of Frederick Henry. The added parapet bears an inscription listing the stadholder’s titles, and the commander’s baton projects into the viewer’s space, lending greater depth to the composition.

  • engraving of man with short curly hair and bear,  draped clothing, lace collar, with cursive caption

    Theodor Matham (1605–1676) after Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Michiel le Blon, 1632–54
    Engraving (sixth state)
    11 3/8 × 7 5/16 in. (28.9 × 18.6 cm)
    Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

    Michiel le Blon’s combined careers as a diplomat and art dealer brought him to the Netherlands, Flanders, Italy, England, and Sweden. Among other transactions, he was involved in major sales from the collections of Peter Paul Rubens and (after his death) Van Dyck. Probably commissioned by Le Blon himself, perhaps as a kind of calling card, this portrait was made by the outstanding Dutch engraver Theodor Matham after a painting by Van Dyck from around 1630. The calligraphic French inscription describes Le Blon as "agent of the Queen and Crown of Sweden."

  • engraving of man and women dressed in lavish clothing, she hands him laurel wreath, with crowns to the side

    Robert van Voerst (1597–1635/36) after Anthony van Dyck
    Charles I and Henrietta Maria Holding a Laurel Wreath, 1634
    Engraving (second state)
    16 3/4 × 22 1/2 in. (42.2 × 57.1 cm)
    Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, The Royal Collection, Windsor

    The first collaboration between Robert van Voerst, a Dutch engraver established in England in 1627, and Van Dyck, this print was published in 1634, shortly after the painter’s arrival in London. The engraving after the double-portrait of Charles I and Henrietta Maria from 1632 is the largest and most ambitious print published during the painter’s lifetime and illustrates the printmaker’s admirably limpid technique. Van Voerst produced just four more engravings after Van Dyck, all for the Iconographie, before he succumbed to the plague.

  • painting of woman and man dressed lavishly, woman is handing him a laurel wreath

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Charles I and Henrietta Maria Holding a Laurel Wreath, 1632
    Oil on canvas
    41 × 69 1/4 in. (104 × 176 cm)
    Archbishop’s Castle and Gardens, Kroměříž

    This double portrait represents a key moment in Van Dyck’s English career. The commission had initially been given to the Dutchman Daniel Mytens, the leading court artist before Van Dyck’s arrival in England, but his painting must not have satisfied his patron, for it was eventually replaced by Van Dyck’s new version. Van Dyck deviates remarkably little from Mytens’s model while improving every aspect of it: the liveliness of the painting, the interaction — at once tender and formal — between the royal pair and between the queen and the viewer, the added interest of the background, and the magnificent harmony of colors. In the year of this triumph, Van Dyck was knighted and appointed "principalle Paynter" of the king while Mytens left England and returned to his native Holland.

  • black chalk portrait sketch of man with large brimmed hat, long hair, mustached and pointed beard

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of Charles I, ca. 1632–36
    Black chalk
    18 7/8 × 14 3/8 in. (47.9 × 36.5 cm)
    Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

    The absence of large, detailed drawn head studies of the men and women portrayed by Van Dyck can best be explained by a preference to work directly in oils when he had the sitter in front of him. This impressive sheet is a notable exception. The searching chalk lines recording the king’s haunting features, including his heavily pouched eyelids and curling moustache, indicate that the study was made from life. The drawing may have served as the model for the central head of Charles I in a famous painting.

  • black and white chalk sketch of woman standing in dress with hat, and no face, on blue paper

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Queen Henrietta Maria with Jeffery Hudson, 1633
    Black chalk, red and yellow (fabricated?) chalks, heightened with white chalk, on blue paper
    16 1/2 × 10 1/8 in. (41.9 × 25.5 cm)
    École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris

    In preparing his portrait of Henrietta Maria, Van Dyck drew this study of her costume. The absence of any close study of the queen’s facial features suggests the drawing may have been made from a hired model wearing a garment lent to the studio. The use of colored chalks to record certain details of the queen’s dress is almost unique in Van Dyck’s drawn oeuvre. Entirely focused on the fall of fabric and the brilliant highlights in the riding clothes, the drawing gives only the most summary indication of the queen’s surroundings or her attendant.

  • painting of woman in lavish blue dress, and black hat, with small person and monkey,  next to gold curtain and crown

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Queen Henrietta Maria with Jeffery Hudson, 1633
    Oil on canvas
    86 1/4 × 53 1/16 in. (219.1 × 134.8 cm)
    National Gallery of Art, Washington; Samuel H. Kress Collection

    Charles I’s queen, Henrietta Maria, was the youngest child of Henri IV of France and Maria de’ Medici. In England, her lifelong devotion to the Catholic faith proved to be a major impediment to her popularity. Nevertheless, she served as the emotional mainstay of her husband’s life and provided an important cultural link among England, France, and the papal court at Rome. This is one of Van Dyck’s earliest portraits of the queen. He assimilates her into an English tradition of depicting queens in hunting dress, and a pan-European practice of representing royalty in the company of dwarves — in this case, Jeffery Hudson, a famous member of the queen’s retinue.

  • oil painting of young girl with pearls, next to face of baby girl, both in white bonnets

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    The Princesses Elizabeth and Anne, Daughters of Charles I, 1637
    Oil on canvas
    11 3/4 × 16 1/2 in. (29.8 × 41.8 cm)
    Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; purchased with the aid of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Scottish Office and the Art Fund 1996

    This is one of the very few surviving oil sketches by Van Dyck for which the related finished portrait still survives. Each of the heads in the complete portrait — representing the five eldest children of King Charles I — must have been based on a similar sketch done from life, whereas the overall composition and individual poses would have been prepared with chalk on paper or in oil on panel. The number of heads in the painting, as well as the challenge of having young children sit still, probably led Van Dyck to make the head studies separately. With admirable economy, he made sure that the sketch contained sufficient information regarding the children’s physiognomy, in the process creating a masterpiece of rapid observation.

  • oil painting portrait of young royal boy dressed in red and gold and young royal girl in silver dress, standing, holding hands, circa 1642

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Prince William of Orange and Mary, Princess Royal, 1641
    Oil on canvas
    71 7/8 × 55 7/8 in. (182.5 × 142 cm)
    Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

    The marriage of William of Orange and Mary, daughter of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, provided an important link between the English court and the Dutch Republic. In this smoothly executed formal wedding portrait, Van Dyck depicts the two children with linked hands, calling attention to the princess’s wedding ring. The reversal of the traditional hierarchical placement of the husband on the left and wife on the right may reflect Mary’s superior status as the daughter of a king. Account books record William’s many purchases on the occasion of his wedding, including the diamond brooch for Mary and suit of pink silk faithfully reproduced here.

  • black chalk sketch of man in ruffled clothing with young boy at his side

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of Endymion Porter and His Son Philip, ca. 1632–33
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on buff paper
    12 ½ × 9 1/2 in. (31.7 × 24.1 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    A prominent courtier and friend of Van Dyck’s, Endymion Porter is depicted with his youngest son, Philip, who was about five when this masterful study was made. The drawing corresponds to the left part of a family portrait of Porter and his wife and was probably made from life to capture the interaction between the figures and the complexities of their costume. The fingers of Porter’s hand resting on the pommel of a sword are drawn twice at right. A second drawing of young Philip, which may have preceded the present sheet, is displayed here.

  • two black chalk sketches of young boy with arm outstretched

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Two Portrait Studies of Philip Porter, ca. 1632–33
    Black chalk on buff paper
    Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

    This sketch prepares the figure of Philip Porter in the family portrait. A more worked out and probably later study for the same painting is shown here. Taken together, the studies present a unique case in Van Dyck’s extant oeuvre, one that suggests the artist prepared the poses of these sitters with greater care than is documented for other portraits. The verso of the drawing contains Van Dyck’s study of the costume worn by Philip’s oldest brother, George, in the same painting.

  • black chalk sketch, on its side, of male's clothed upper body and hands

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Study of the Upper Body and Hands of George Porter, ca. 1632–33
    Black chalk on buff paper
    Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

    Displayed here on its side, this is Van Dyck’s detailed study for the costume and hands holding gloves of George Porter, the eldest son of the courtier Endymion Porter and the second figure from the right in Van Dyck’s portrait of the Porter family. The drawing does not include George’s head, which Van Dyck must have studied separately, either in chalk or (more likely) in an oil sketch. The recto of this sheet contains two studies of George’s youngest brother for the same composition.

  • black chalk portrait sketch of man with beard

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Turned to the Right, ca. 1635–36
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on blue paper
    9 1/2 × 8 1/2 in. (24.2 × 21.6 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    Despite its smaller size, simpler format, and the lack of finish in the costume, this head study of Lord Arundel is as unforgettable in conveying the strong personality and lively intelligence of its sitter as the larger drawing here. In both sheets, Arundel wears the insignia of the Order of the Garter on a ribbon.

  • black and white chalk sketch of man seated with drapery-like clothing and holding stick and paper

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Seated, ca. 1635–36
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on gray-brown paper
    19 × 13 7/8 in. (48.4 × 35.3 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    A leading aristocrat and art patron in Caroline England, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, was portrayed several times by Van Dyck, as well as by Peter Paul Rubens. Representing his formidable presence with exceptional immediacy, this drawing does not correspond directly to any of Van Dyck’s portraits of the "Collector Earl" but was undoubtedly made from life with a larger composition in mind. The drawing may be a rejected idea for a lost painting that showed a seated Arundel with his wife, Aletheia Talbot, and their family.

  • black and white chalk sketch of three men standing on stairs, on blue paper

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of James, William, and John Herbert, Standing on Stairs, Facing Right, 1633–35
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on blue paper
    17 3/8 × 10 5/8 (42.2 × 27. 1 cm)
    École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris

    This recently reattributed drawing is a sketch for the pose of three of the sons of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, in Van Dyck’s largest surviving painting, a portrait of the Herbert family almost seventeen feet wide. Van Dyck made no attempt to indicate anything of the boys’ features and probably did not work from life. He seems to have considered the drawing as a functional step toward the complete portrait, giving us a glimpse of his draftsmanship at its roughest and most energetic. A contemporary source describes such drawings by Van Dyck as "figures & postures all in Suden [sudden] lines, as angles."

  • black chalk drawing of man standing with lace collar, holding cloak over arm

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond, Standing, ca. 1633
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on light brown paper
    18 7/8 × 11 in. (47.9 × 28 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    A prominent nobleman under Charles I, James Stuart is seen in this drawing and the related painting wearing the attire and insignia of the Order of the Garter, with which he had been invested in 1633. Although the costume and face are specific enough to suggest that the drawing was made with Stuart himself sitting, it mainly served as a study of his pose and costume. For the head, Van Dyck would probably have made a more detailed oil sketch, possibly on the canvas intended for the finished painting.

  • black chalk sketching of two greyhound dogs sitting, one without head

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Two Studies of a Greyhound, ca. 1633
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on light brown paper
    18 7/8 × 12 3/4 in. (47.8 × 32.4 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    Van Dyck made these studies of a magnificent greyhound in preparation for a full-length portrait of the courtier James Stuart (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). A sketch of his pose and costume in the painting is shown here. The drawing of the dog is more detailed, perhaps because Van Dyck knew he would have less time to capture the pose of the animal in an oil sketch. In fact, during the dog’s "sitting," it shifted the position of its legs, prompting the artist to draw its body twice. For the painting, Van Dyck combined the body at left with the head at right. The dog, which allegedly saved its master’s life during a boar hunt, is also included in another portrait of Stuart by Van Dyck (Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London).

  • black and white chalk sketch of man with curly hair and collar ruffle

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of a Young Man (Bernard Stuart?), ca. 1638
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on gray-blue paper
    13 1/2 × 8 3/4 in. (34.3 × 22.3 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    This fairly detailed head study stands apart from most of Van Dyck’s English-period portrait drawings, which are generally concerned only with pose and costume. The long-haired youth wearing a luxurious lace collar may be Bernard Stuart, brother of James, Duke of Lennox and Richmond, who is shown in the portrait study here. Van Dyck portrayed Bernard together with another brother, John, in a famous double portrait from around 1638 (The National Gallery, London), and the young nobleman is also possibly the subject of the drawing here.

  • black chalk sketch of half nude male with cloak about him and shoulder length hair

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait Study of a Young Man in Classical Garb, ca. 1632–41
    Black chalk on buff paper
    15 7/8 × 10 1/8 in. (40.2 × 25.7 cm)
    Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge;
    Alpheus Hyatt Purchasing Fund

    Although most of Van Dyck’s portraits show his sitters in contemporary dress, a few present them in the religious or mythological guise of a history painting. This drawing appears to be made in preparation for such a portrait, possibly depicting its subject as St. John the Baptist or a Greek shepherd, although no related painting is known today. A strong resemblance suggests the young man could be the same as the one in the more conventional portrait drawing here. Indeed, a pastoral theme would have particularly appealed to a young aristocrat at the court of Charles I, where noblemen and women often played the roles of shepherds and shepherdesses at masques.

  • black chalk, faint sketch of woman facing left with curls

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Study of the Head of a Lady Facing Left, ca. 1635–40
    Black chalk on light-brown (formerly blue) paper
    9 13/16 × 8 3/16 in. (25 × 20.8 cm)
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1926

    This head study, until recently attributed to Peter Lely, is one of the more detailed portrait drawings of Van Dyck’s English period. The lady’s pointed nose and chin and curly hair are precisely recorded, while her dress is indicated only with the faintest outlines. Despite its small size, the drawing makes the somewhat forbidding appearance of the woman remarkably present.

  • oil painting of woman standing in blue dress holding green scarf

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Lady Anne Carey, Later Viscountess Claneboye and Countess of Clanbrassil, ca. 1636
    Oil on canvas
    83 1/2 × 50 1/4 in. (212.1 × 127.6 cm)
    The Frick Collection; Henry Clay Frick Bequest

    Anne Carey, later Countess of Clanbrassil, was the daughter of Henry Carey, second Earl of Monmouth, and Martha Cranfield. According to a family history, the Countess of Clanbrassil was a "very handsome and witty" woman who was "extraordinary in knowledge, virtue, and piety." This portrait was likely painted on the occasion of her engagement to James Hamilton, heir of a Scottish family that had received large land grants in Northern Ireland. Lady Anne strides to the left in an Arcadian landscape, with the boulder behind her framing a woodland vista. Van Dyck reused this backdrop in other portraits, catering to the taste of English aristocrats who sought refuge from an increasingly unstable political situation in pastoral fantasies.

  • oil painting of standing woman in white dress, young girl in orange dress and man in black garb

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    James Stanley, Lord Strange, Later Seventh Earl of Derby, with His Wife, Charlotte, and Their Daughter, ca. 1636
    Oil on canvas
    97 × 84 1/8 in. (246.4 × 213.7 cm)
    The Frick Collection; Henry Clay Frick Bequest

    James Stanley, Lord Strange, Earl of Derby, was descended from an ancient land-owning family in the north of England that also ruled the Isle of Man. He married Charlotte de La Trémoille, who was related to some of the most prominent aristocratic defenders of Protestantism in continental Europe. Both played a role in the royalist cause following the outbreak of the civil war, and the earl was eventually beheaded. Here, Lord and Lady Strange form an inverted triangle with one of their daughters, an arrangement of classical simplicity that coexists with an allusive iconographic program. The island in the background may represent the Isle of Man and the color of the young girl’s dress her descent from the House of Orange.

  • oil painting of man standing in blue garb with red cloak, resting book on rock

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    John Suckling, ca. 1638
    Oil on canvas
    85 1/4 × 51 1/4 in. (216.5 × 130.2 cm)
    The Frick Collection; Henry Clay Frick Bequest

    Sir John Suckling was the son of the secretary of state and the nephew of the lord treasurer of England. After an education on the Continent, he gained a reputation as a spendthrift, lothario, and gambler but also as an accomplished poet and playwright. Suckling may have sat for Van Dyck in 1638, the year his tragedy Aglaura was staged. By displaying Shakespeare’s First Folio in his portrait, Suckling took a stance in contemporary debates about the merits of Shakespeare and modern (as opposed to classical) poetry. A similar position is expressed with the line from the Roman satirist Persius inscribed on the boulder to the right of Suckling: NE TE QUÆSIVERIS EXTRA (Do not seek outside yourself).

  • oil painting man standing with long brown hair and mustache, wearing black with white blouse, red belt and large white neck collar

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Pomponne II de Bellièvre, ca. 1637–40
    Oil on canvas
    54 × 43 1/2 in. (137.2 × 110.5 cm)
    Seattle Art Museum; Purchased with a major grant from an anonymous donor; additional funds provided by Louise Raymond Owens; Norman and Amelia Davis; Oliver T. and Carol Erickson; Seattle Art Museum Guild; Pauline Ederer Bolster and Arthur F. Ederer in memory of their sister, Milli Ederer Kastner; Mr. and Mrs. James D. Burns; gift in memory of Andrew Price by Mrs. Mary Price and their family; bequest of Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Stewart Downey; bequest of Charles Moseley Clark; Max R. Schweitzer; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Stimson, Thomas D. Stimson Memorial Collection; Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection; Silver Anniversary Fund; Margaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund; Seattle Art Museum Purchase Fund by exchange

    Pomponne II de Bellièvre, Lord of Grignon, came from a prominent family of French statesmen and twice served as French ambassador to the English court. Van Dyck most likely painted Bellièvre during the latter’s first posting to London, although the ambassador could also have sat for him during the painter’s sojourn in Paris shortly before his death. Van Dyck’s likeness is a study in muted elegance, with Bellièvre’s long brown hair lapping over his floppy collar while a sash of crimson silk accents his otherwise black and white costume. Bellièvre was a noted collector of works by Nicolas Poussin and Philippe de Champaigne, and his austere and learned taste may have informed his instructions to Van Dyck for the present portrait.

  • oil painting of man standing in armor, with hand resting on helmet on table and staff in other hand

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Edmund Verney, ca. 1640
    Oil on canvas
    53 3/8 × 42 5/8 in. (135.5 × 108.2 cm)
    Private collection, on long-term loan to the National Portrait Gallery, London

    Sir Edmund Verney rose to the office of knight marshal and standard-bearer to Charles I before falling at the Battle of Edgehill in the English Civil War. Here, Verney’s head appears against an unfinished backdrop, framed by a halo of paint that marks the border between Van Dyck’s own contribution to the painting and the secondary areas probably meant to be completed by an assistant. These halos, more visible now than they would have been in Van Dyck’s day, are a trademark of portraits from his English period. The composition draws upon Van Dyck’s earlier portraits of military figures, usually accompanied by the attributes of baton and helmet.

  • painting of portrait of woman in blue and white dress with sheer wrap and pearl earring and necklace

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1640
    Oil on canvas
    29 7/8 × 23 1/4 in. (75.9 × 59.1 cm)
    Speed Art Museum, Louisville; Museum Purchase, Preston Pope Satterwhite Fund

    This outstanding portrait offers valuable evidence of Van Dyck’s method during his English period. The treatment of the face is highly finished and refined, but the woman’s bust and hand await finishing glazes, and there are extensive areas of unpainted canvas that suggest a shawl wrapped around her body. As with many other works from his London studio, Van Dyck must have painted his sitter’s face from life, resulting in a halo still visible around her head. A workshop assistant would probably have completed the painting of the background and draperies before Van Dyck applied a few final touches. If the occasional identification of the sitter as Rachel, Countess of Southampton, is correct, then work on the portrait may have been interrupted by the sitter’s death in childbirth.

  • red, black, white drawing of woman's face, while reclining

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Head Study of a Reclining Woman, Possibly Margaret Lemon, ca. 1638–39 (?)
    Black and red chalk, heightened with white chalk
    7 5/8 × 9 3/4 in. (19.5 × 24.7 cm)
    The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

    Flattery seems to have been of no concern to Van Dyck when he made this intimate portrait of a reclining woman. To achieve the detailed depiction of the face, Van Dyck used red in addition to black and white chalks, following the example of Peter Paul Rubens in his portrait drawings of relatives. Like these, Van Dyck’s unique drawing was probably made as an independent work. The inscription below identifies the sitter as his mistress, Margaret Lemon, but a comparison with known portraits of her, including the print after Van Dyck in the exhibition, does not fully confirm this identification.

  • oil painting of three-quarter portrait of young woman wearing silver dress, pearls, red flowers in hair

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Margaret Lemon, ca. 1638
    Oil on canvas
    23 3/8 × 19 1/2 in. (59.5 × 49.5 cm)
    Private collection, New York

    There is almost no surviving documentation for the life of Van Dyck’s mistress, Margaret Lemon, although some sources describe her as a famous courtesan. In this portrait, long considered lost, Lemon appears in three-quarter profile, delicately touching the fabric at her shoulder. Only recently has this version been recognized as Van Dyck’s original, the source of many imitations. At some point, the canvas was cut down, truncating the gesture of Lemon’s left hand. This area may have been unfinished at Van Dyck’s death.

  • portrait etching of young woman in profile wearing pearls, and dress, in octagon frame, circa 1646

    Jean Morin (ca. 1605–1650), after Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Margaret Lemon, 1646
    Etching (second state)
    12 5/16 × 10 1/16 in. (31.2 × 25.5 cm)
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
    Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1941

    An almost exact contemporary of Van Dyck’s, the French etcher Jean Morin is among the earliest and best printmakers to have worked after him. Taking full advantage of the subtle gradations and quivering lines allowed by the etching process, Morin based this plate on the portrait of Van Dyck’s mistress. The lack of an inscription identifying the sitter suggests the print was made less as a likeness of a particular woman than as an example of Van Dyck’s mastery of the genre, although the handwritten annotation indicates that her identity was preserved.

  • oil painting of woman in blue and white dress, displaying jeweled cross at her wrist, and wearing leaves as hairpiece

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    Mary, Lady van Dyck, née Ruthven, ca. 1640
    Oil on canvas
    41 × 32 in. (104 × 81 cm)
    Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

    Mary Ruthven came from an aristocratic, if impoverished, family of Scottish Catholics and served as a maid of honor to Queen Henrietta Maria. Van Dyck’s marriage to her in early 1640 marked his social ascent, but the painter died less than two years later, just eight days after the birth of his daughter Justina. Van Dyck’s portrait of his new bride is a sensuously painted autograph work. A cluster of oak leaves bound in Lady van Dyck’s hair may symbolize constancy, while her elegantly splayed fingers call attention to the proscribed Catholic faith that she shared with her husband, symbolized in the crucifix she displays.

  • black and white chalk drawing of man wearing hat with musette, bag pipe like instrument

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    François Langlois, Playing a Musette, 1641 (?)
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on buff paper
    15 1/2 × 11 1/8 in. (39.3 × 28.3 cm)
    Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris

    Van Dyck’s preparatory drawing of Langlois closely accords with the painting. Nonetheless, it conveys an entirely different emotional tenor, with the painted version replacing his melancholy expression with a smile. Few drawings by Van Dyck better exemplify the bold, spare manner of his late graphic style.

  • oil painting portrait of man in red with hat holding a musette, bag-pipe instrument, circa 1641

    Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
    François Langlois, Playing a Musette, 1641 (?)
    Oil on canvas
    41 1/4 × 33 1/8 in. (104.8 × 84.1 cm)
    The National Gallery, London, and Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham

    With its vivid color scheme and fluid brushwork, this portrait has long been seen as an exception within the work of Van Dyck’s last period. The print publisher and art dealer François Langlois, a key figure in the world of European publishing, is most likely depicted here at the very end of Van Dyck’s life, when the two men were both in Paris. Van Dyck’s unusual composition, which may reflect a friendship between sitter and painter, shows Langlois playing a musette, a kind of bagpipe on which he is reputed to have been a virtuoso.

  • black chalk sketch of cleric seated in chair with headpiece, holding book

    Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)
    Hendrick van Thulden, ca. 1615–16
    Black chalk, on buff paper
    14 3/4 × 10 3/8 in. (37.4 × 26.2 cm)
    The British Museum, London

    This drawing was attributed to Van Dyck until recognized as a preparatory sketch for a portrait of the theologian Hendrick van Thulden by Peter Paul Rubens. Dated around the time Van Dyck entered the studio of Rubens in the mid-1610s, it must be the type of sketch the younger artist saw his master make in connection with portraits and which he followed in his own studio. It is very similar to many of Van Dyck’s portrait studies.

  • sketch of woman seated wearing dress with stiff collar, alongside sketch of her face

    Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678)
    Catharina Behagel, 1635 or shortly before
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk
    11 1/2 × 7 3/4 in. (29.2 × 19.7 cm)
    Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris

    The cartouche of the blue mount made for the drawing by the eighteenth-century French collector Pierre-Jean Mariette attributes the sheet to Van Dyck. The focus on the pose and costume of the lady, rather than on her face, is indeed comparable to many of Van Dyck’s surviving chalk studies for portraits from the 1630s. However, the more regular, controlled style points to Van Dyck’s great contemporary Jacob Jordaens, who made the drawing in preparation for a painted portrait of the wife of a wealthy Antwerp merchant.

  • black chalk sketch of man looking left with mustache and pointed beard

    Attributed to Jan Cossiers (1600–1671)
    Head Study of a Man Looking Left, ca. 1630–50 (?)
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on buff paper
    9 1/2 × 7 1/2 in. (24 × 19.1 cm)
    Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

    The cautious attribution of this study of a middle-aged man to Jan Cossiers, a Flemish painter who left a beautiful series of drawn portraits of his sons, is based on the drawing’s style and an inscription on its verso. An earlier attribution to Van Dyck must have been inspired by the drawing’s exceptional quality and the sitter’s melancholy gaze. Although Van Dyck often employed the same technique of black and white chalk on lightly toned paper, the detail and worked-out modeling here set it apart from his known head studies.

  • black ink and chalk drawing of man standing in full armor, with sword

    Unknown Flemish Artist
    Study of a Standing Man in Armor, ca. 1650
    Pen and black ink, brush and gray and brown ink, with white, gray, and yellow gouache, and black and red chalk
    16 3/4 × 10 1/4 in. (42.6 × 26.1 cm)
    Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; Gift of The Honorable and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss

    This detailed drawing is the most impressive of three studies of armor, all by the same hand and previously thought to be by Van Dyck. Although he regularly represented his military sitters dressed for battle, no related studies of armor by Van Dyck have survived. The rich technique, including colored gouache, distinguishes this drawing from Van Dyck’s portrait studies. Still, it can be situated in the artist’s larger circle, as it once belonged to Prosper Henry Lankrink, an assistant to the portraitist Peter Lely, who was also one of the most important early collectors of drawings by Van Dyck.

  • black chalk scketch of man's torso, with hand on hip and other hand turned up

    Unknown (probably Flemish) Artist
    Study of a Man’s Torso and Hands, mid- to late seventeenth century
    Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on buff paper
    10 × 8 1/4 in. (25.5 × 21 cm)
    École Nationale Supérie des Beaux-Arts, Paris

    Although an attribution to a French artist has been suggested for this drawing, the pose and costume’s flamboyant character point to a Flemish contemporary of Van Dyck’s. In its focus on the man’s costume and its technique of black chalk on lightly toned paper, heightened with white chalk, the study is comparable to several drawings by Van Dyck also on view in this exhibition.

  • black and white chalk drawing of female hands entwined with rings and pearl bracelet

    Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen the Elder (1593–1661)
    Study of the Hands of a Lady of the Raphoen Family, 1646 or before
    Black and white chalk on blue paper
    7 1/2 × 11 5/8 in. (19 × 29.5 cm)
    The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

    Although hands play a major part in enlivening and conveying expression in Van Dyck’s portraits, very few of his hand studies survive. This sheet is among a group of carefully worked-out drawings that were formerly thought to be by him but have now been reattributed to Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen, a Dutch portraitist who had a successful career in London until he was overshadowed in the 1630s by Van Dyck’s arrival. This drawing dates from after his return to Holland in 1643 and is preparatory to a painting of a member of the Raphoen family in Amsterdam, as the artist’s inscription in Dutch ("Miss Raphune") indicates.

  • black and red chalk sketch in draped clothing

    Peter Lely, born Pieter van der Faes (1618–1680)
    Study of a Hand and Drapery, ca. 1658
    Black and red chalk, heightened with white chalk, on gray (formerly blue) paper
    12 5/8 × 8 3/8 in. (32.1 × 21.2 cm)
    Detroit Institute of Arts; Founders Society Purchase, William H. Murphy Fund

    Once believed to be a study for the figure of James Stanley, Earl of Derby in Van Dyck’s family portrait on view in the East Gallery, this drawing has since been recognized as a study by the Dutch-born Peter Lely, who succeeded Van Dyck as England’s foremost portraitist. It is close to a gesture in a portrait by Lely of John and Sarah Earle. Although his technique and style recall some drawings by Van Dyck, Lely used red chalk in addition to black and white and drew the hands in a more precise way. As Van Dyck often did, Lely worked on paper that was originally blue. The irregular borders of the drawing indicate that it was never cut down, as were most surviving seventeenth-century drawings.

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