Unveiling Van Dyck's Mastery in Royal Portraiture | Perspective

[Music] at the very end of the 16th century here in the Flemish city of Antwerp a child was born who would grow into one of the greatest artists of his age like most citizens of Antwerp he was raised as a Catholic and in common with many Flemish artists his finest paintings included many Timeless religious images but it is not for these that this artist is best known today instead his Fame stems from his portraits of the nobility of his day his name was Anthony Van Dyke and although his work took him away from his homeland he remains one of the greatest of the Dutch Masters Anthony Van Dyke was born in Antwerp on the 22nd of March 1599 the 7th of 12 children his family with prosperous textile Merchants were thrived in spite of the conflict that had spit the Netherlands into Protestant Holland and Catholic Flanders we know that by 1609 he was already The Apprentice of Hendrick van balen a successful local figure painter he was just 10 years of age details of the young Van Dyke's apprenticeship are also sketchy but it was undoubtedly a good time to be an artist [Music] in the 1610s a truce between Catholic Flanders and Protestant Holland enabled Antwerp to recover some of its former economic prosperity simultaneously the Catholic hierarchy began to commission a massive body of new religious works for the city's churches in time Anthony Van Dyke would secure Many religious commissions himself but in the second decade of the 17th century one Antwerp artist stood Head and Shoulders above all the rest one of the greatest painters of all time a man whose influence Van Dyke could not ignore Peter Paul Rubens at the moment that Van Dyke came to maturity which is in the middle of the 1610s Rubens was extremely dominant I mean he'd come back from Italy and settled and become court painter the the principal court painter to the archduke's Albert and Isabella he had established a very large scale studio in Antwerp he was also a history painter so in that sense he practiced the most prestigious genre of painting in Antwerp as the young Van Dyke was growing up as he was training in the studio of vanvalen what was happening in antwo were the Great altarpieces of Rubens were going up in the churches of Antwerp the great erection of the cross in Saint valbuja and the deposition from the cross in the cathedral and these pictures really transformed religious painting in Flanders and in Antwerp in particular and this is a new language a new type of painting which is more ambitious more italianette on a huger scale with a different type of palette and really everything else must have just suddenly seemed old-fashioned unexciting and dull and when you compare Reubens to the work of ambalan of Van Dyke's Master you you can you can see what effect the site of these great altarpieces by Rubens must have had we cannot be certain when it was that Rubens and the teenage van dijk first became acquainted while still in his mid-teens van dijk had begun to execute portraits such as the image simply known as portrait of an old man and this enigmatic self-portrait painted when the artist may have been as young as 14. perhaps it was these typically northern European images that first alerted Rubens to Anthony Van Dyke before long the two men were working together as van dijk joined one of the most famous art studios of all time the important thing to remember is that he wasn't pupil he was more like I suppose we'd call it a specialist subcontractor an analogy from the building trade he he worked as a fully paid up Master painter but as a young man in Reuben's studio and Rubens we have to remember ran a huge Enterprise producing paintings um in huge numbers and in on a very large scale and Van Dyke was one of the pupils who not wrong word one of the assistants who would convert Reuben's ideas into finished paintings the single most important thing is that he was a prodigy at 15 Van Dyke was able to do with paint what he wanted it to do he had an extraordinary technical gift from the very earliest and this is unlike Rubens I mean if you look at the early Rubens he's often very clumsy very slow in rather raw colors clumsy figure drawing you look at the Young Rembrandt also I mean it's the sense of of an artist learning his trade no sense of that with Van Dyke I mean he can do it at 15 he can do it at 16. and really he's very confident and because he has this extraordinary technical gift and what is to me particularly fascinating is that you can see in his early work that he's working in his own independent style as an independent artist in Antwerp and he's also working in the style of Rubens he's able to move I mean such is his technical virtuosity he's able to move from one style to the other and Back Again The Young Van Dyke quickly made a favorable impression on his master in 1618 Rubens described him as the best of my pupils two years later van dijk worked as Reuben's Chief assistant on a large commission for ceiling paintings for antwerp's Jesuit Church sadly an 18th century fire means that we cannot appreciate their joint effort today but we can see the influence of Reuben's in some of Van Dyke's early religious images in the mocking of Christ from around 1620 the powerful musculature is clearly inspired by Rubens whose own inspiration came directly from classical sculpture but Van Dyke would take less inspiration from the Ancients and from sculptural form as he began to forge his own artistic identity it may be that by the time this canvas was painted van dijk was known to the noted English art collector the Earl of Arundel and it appears that the Earl was Keen to bring the young Flemish artist to work in England by October of that year Van Dyke had completed his first journey to London it would not be his last I think if one thinks about his whole Van Dyke's whole career that Van Dyke would have been perfectly happy to have stayed in Antwerp run his great his own great International Studio serving his National clients from Antwerp if it hadn't been for Rubens and the fact that Rubens was there dominating painting in the city meant that really he had to travel he had to get away he had to establish himself in Italy first and then in London over the next four months he familiarized himself with London Society and painted a portrait of the Earl of Arundel the influence of Venetian artists would soon reveal itself in Van Dyke's work but in the spring of 1621 he was back in antwer alongside his master significantly Rubens had spent several years in Italy studying the great works of the Renaissance firsthand and had found particular inspiration in the vibrancy and color of the venetians Van Dyke was fascinated with Phoenician painting from a very early point in his career even before he ever got to Italy he was already studying um Venetian Art he first of all he studied Engravings and works copies that Rubens had made after Venetian painters one of the crucial points of his visit to England in 1620 his first visit to England was that it was the first time he was able to study works by the great Venetian Masters Titian in particular who was his great hero in Reuben's Studio Van Dyke I think had observed that many of rubin's paintings were based on a kind of sculptural definition of form what you get from Titian is forms molded by color and tone and those are the lessons that Van Dyke learns from Titian soon Van Dyke could pursue his own artistic mission to Italy but before he left he executed this portrait which shows the beginnings of his mature approach here Van Dyke's personal relationship with Ruben is clearly evident the woman depicted in this portrait is Isabella Brandt Reuben's wife but who she is is less significant than how she is depicted Van Dyke's earliest portraits had been simple devoid all but the most basic of settings and dark to the point of somber this portrait is different the coloring is more striking the sitter's pose is less rigid while the incorporation of the uncertain weather and the flowing red drape introduces a sense of movement and life his very earliest portraits are dated 1618. this is the this is the year in which he joined the Guild in Antwerp and these are highly conventional I mean they're really in the 16th century format the format essential of Antonis Moore who's the great Portrait Painter of Antwerp who preceded this generation a highly conventional very static black and white front face on three-quarter length portraits he then begins to experiment and what he's interested in really is movement within pictures so really it's it's a sense of liberating the Flemish I mean breaking the Flemish tradition breaking this very rigid Flemish style and bringing movement and action within the within the within the portrait I mean that's the key really it seems to me to Van Dyke's uh development he's working two different manners he's working in a Reuben's Manor something that's imitating and improving on Reuben's technique so he's imitating Reuben's sort of um Reuben's plasticity of form roundness of form but at the same time he was working in a very sort of loose technique with loose dry brush work what he does as he becomes a more mature artist is he learns how to bring these two aspects together and so his technique becomes more sophisticated he he combines something of the oiliness of Reuben's paint with the sort of painterly effects of Titian and so you get a greater refinement in for instance things like the silks certainly in the Antwerp period he's also very interested particularly in blacks and whites and Stark contrasts and his flesh tones become increasingly sophisticated history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world we aim to bring you only the most dramatic and fascinating stories of the past through our award-winning documentaries find out about the rise of leaders such as Cleopatra and Napoleon in our latest offering of exclusive documentaries sign up now for a free trial and prospective fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code perspective at checkout in the Autumn of 1621 Anthony Van Dyke once more found himself following in Reuben's footsteps on the 3rd of October he left Antwerp and headed south the following month he arrived in the wealthy Italian city of Genoa where Rubens had stayed some 14 years before this portrait of Elena Grimaldi from 1623 has certain features in common with the earlier image of Reuben's wife [Music] again the background climate feels almost animated and Architectural features are included to the right in this case Corinthian columns early in his career van dijk realized that architectural features and other framing devices produced a strong sense of solidity in his portraits it would become a recurring feature of his work [Music] where this canvas differs from the earlier portrait of Isabella Brunt is that the subject is depicted full length and projects an air of nobility to the point of aloofness the same is true of this image of the marquisa balbi another full-length portrait whose overall Darkness only serves to emphasize the painter's wonderful handling of gold in the sitter's costume 1620s Genoa was a tight-knit community of influential families whose wealth generated commissions for portraits of all generations it was now that van dijk executed his first depictions of children with this canvas depicting three boys also members of the bolby family a confident posture of the boy on the left indicates the importance of these genuine's children and their status is further enhanced by an artistic device that would become another trademark of Van Dyke's work the use of a low horizon line so that the subject seems to rise above the physical environment Van Dyke's Mastery as a colorist can also be appreciated in his Italian work Golds whites blues and reds all contribute to the vibrancy and life of his best portraits with this image of cardinal Guido bentivolio almost a study in crimson the richness of the Holy man's flowing garments is what first catches the eye but closer examination also reveals a near hidden column to the top left of the canvas in Italy for the first time he adopted the Italian style of using very dark grounds I mean he worked from dark to light which is an Italian technique and this he adopted while he's in Italy so in a sense the figures in his portrait shine out of rather dark backgrounds and he really worked he prepared his canvases with what seems like often a dark red ground and then worked out from from from dark to light now later in England he doesn't seem to he seems to have abandoned that style and goes back to working in the in the northern style which is essentially using white grounds and then and working too too dark so in that sense there was a technical difference the range of colors that he uses in in Italy are very similar to the range of colors he uses when he's back home in Antwerp and then when he goes to goes to England so there's not any very profound difference there but of course he painted what was in front of him in a sense I mean if you think of the rich velvet Robes of the genoese aristocracy I mean this is the kind of color the kind of palette that he adopts of course is given by the by the clothes of the of the the uh his sitters and I mean clearly that sort of very rich and deep and dark colors worn by the genuine's aristocracy is rather different from the kind of colors that we associate with the you know the satins and silks of the Caroline Court which tend to be of a much higher tone in Italy he does have first-hand contact with Titian and the great Venetian Masters after him people like tintoretto so this this direct experience of the kind of color schemes and the color ranges that Past Masters has used that gives Van Dyke the clue on how to incorporate color into his own portraits the portrait of cardinal bentivolio was painted by Van Dyke early on in his Italian years not in januar but in Rome a stay in the Eternal City itself was essential unlike the passionate antiquarian Rubens Van Dyke showed little interest in classical sculptures this seeming different in taste would manifest itself in the two artists respective approach to their painting Rubens was primarily more interested in form so and he collected um sculpture and had a sort of little Museum in his house in the vaporstrat and you can see in his paintings that there is a much greater understanding and emphasis on the plasticity of form and the way he builds up forming painting so it gives his paintings a much more powerful presence if you like physical presence Van Dyke was more interested in the surface so for him sculpture wasn't such an overriding interest and it was for that reason as well that of course he was attracted to artists like Titian who concentrated on Surface effect rather than three-dimensional effects compared with Rubens the art that van dijk sought out in Italy was remarkably specific his surviving notebooks are dominated by copies of paintings by veroneser and especially Titian the artists of 16th Century Venice Van Dyke's Italian notebooks reveal his artistic interests during his stay in the south but of his personal experiences our knowledge is again Limited but one contemporary account makes it clear that the artist was already in no doubt as to his social status he dressed well sporting a gold chain and a plumed hat and he traveled in style with a small Entourage of servants his biographer described him as acting more like a prince than a painter and this self-portrait from the time May reveal something of this attitude showing the artist dressed as the shepherd Paris this is undoubtedly an image of self-confidence almost to the point of arrogance like Reubens before him the 25 year old van dijk was well aware of his abilities but Rubens had never let personal success affect his strong religious faith and Van Dyke also remained a devoted Catholic throughout his life his religious images reflect this strong belief in 1624 he traveled to Palermo in Sicily only for an outbreak of plague to afflict the city but as the disease raged a remarkable Discovery was made the bones of a long-forgotten local saint Rosalia believing this was a sign from God the citizens prayed to Rosalia to end Palermo's suffering for whatever reason the plague was eventually lifted van dijk's response was to create this canvas depicting the saint interceding against the plague this is a painting more relevant to the everyday life of the time than might first seem apparent plague was still a scourge of Europe and in June 1626 it may have claimed the life of Isabella Brandt the wife of Peter Paul Rubens we know that Rubens reacted to his wife's death by throwing himself into diplomatic missions which took him away from Antwerp for much of the late 1620s so it was Van Dyke who received many of the best commissions for religious images that were still in demand at the time for the next five years he was kept busy creating altarpieces of which the greatest is surely Madonna and child enthroned with Saints commissioned by a religious Brotherhood of which van dijk was himself a member [Music] here we can see the distinctive features of Van Dyke's portraiture applied to deeply spiritual subject matter the devotion of none other than Saint Rosalia to the Infant Jesus held by the Madonna between Saints Peter and Paul the kneeling Saint is clothed in the familiar gold and red but it is the white of Mary's flowing robe that is perhaps the greater achievement the Cloudy background and the powerfully architectural framing are also present in a remarkably unified and deeply spiritual canvas van dijk may be best known for his portraits images such as this prove that portraiture was just one of his talents it's very important to remember that that Van Dyke although he in the sense to a modern audience he's known principally as a Portrait Painter he was a great religious painter a great religious painter of the counter-reformation and I one of the greatest of all mythological painters I mean I think the cupid and psyche in the Royal collection is one of the greatest mythologies of the 17th century and On a par with Velazquez I mean this is he's a very great painter and you know of a of non-portrait as it were of pictures other than than portraits you know he is one of the greatest of all counter-reformation painters and one of the greatest of mythological bands so I rate him extremely highly when they deal with um one individual's state of mind so when when the painting enables you to focus on what one emotion or the emotional one character's face they can be extremely powerful indeed and I suppose you might say that that's more similar to Portrait painting their weakness is that um Van Dyke wasn't a particularly original Storyteller so the design ideas are seldom original I mean for example in in Dallas which Gallery we have an early Van Dyke Samson and Delilah which is very closely modeled on Reuben Samson and Delilah and Van Dyke slips in some good ideas and it's beautifully executed but it isn't a it isn't an entirely original idea Rubens was painting from a greater amount of acquired knowledge Rubens had much more imagination and invention I think that goes down to the fact that he's better educated than Van Dyke for the student of Van dijk the Antwerp years are another period of uncertainty in his personal life we can be certain that he was already a wealthy man like his master Reubens but just as their art displayed subtle differences so did their personal characters the amazing self-confidence of Rubens was not wholly matched by Van Dyke despite his outward trappings of success he he was described when he was on his Italian Travels by bellary as dressing up in the most extravagant dress with golden chains and feathers in his hat with a retinue of servants which thoroughly upset his Flemish contemporaries and he refused to go on their drinking bats because he obviously wanted to be taken as an aristocrat and he liked mixing an aristocratic company and he obviously enjoyed the lavish lifestyle that went with that and of course by becoming a Portrait Painter to the great it meant that he could also participate in their lifestyle and a visit later to Van Dyke studio in England was a social event in itself so the sitter would go to the studio not just be sketched painted by Van Dyke but it would also have lunch we listened to a concert and of course all of this was part of Van Dyke's um you know he actually like living like that but also it helped bring in more clients as well because it became part of the sort of social calendar that you went and had your portrait painted by Van Dyke during 1629 he had received an unusual Commission to depict a scene from Jerusalem delivered a remarkable verse epic by the great Italian poeto tasso this popular work combined the literary form of the ancient epic with strong contemporary religious sentiment [Music] the resulting canvas shows the characters of the enchantress ahmeda a Christian Ronaldo about to be bound by a chain of flowers it is a stunning piece of work whose Venetian coloring and mysterious landscape combined to create an other worldly image almost eight feet square but Ronaldo and armida is an important canvas not only for the genius of his execution but because of the identity of the man who commissioned it van dijk received the commission from Endymion Porter an Englishman whom he had met during his first stay in London but Porter himself was only an agent the real buyer was none other than King Charles the first it was this canvas more than any other that made child resolve to employ Van Dyke himself by 1632 the king's wish had come true that year Anthony Van Dyke became painter to the most artistic court that England had ever known Charles first was one of the great collectors of painting in Europe at the time Rubens referred to him as the amateur who understood painting the best amongst all the princes of the world but of course changes were taking place in Charles's Court by the time Van Dyke arrived for the second time the court had become much more sober and reserved but court entertainment was still very important the court mask these official pageants played a dominant role in shaping the kind of image that Charles's Court had I'm sure the key to the relationship between Van Dyke and Charles the first is Titian I mean for Charles the first petition was the most important painter in the world the greatest painter who had ever lived and he saw Van Dyke's Titian reborn we may never know the precise reasons for Van Dyke's moved to England but the artistic life of Charles Court must have been a hugely influential Factor [Music] further persuasion from Charles included a salary of 200 pounds per year a substantial home in London's black Friars generous working conditions and a Knighthood soon the new court painter began to justify the king's largest and in so doing change English portraiture forever Van Dyke entirely changed portraiture in this country I mean he really set a new type of portraiture I mean there had been neverlandish artists here before people like Cornelius Johnson Paul Van Soma had worked at the court in London but really they were swept away when Van Dyke arrived I mean he was bringing the absolutely the latest type of international Court painting I mean there's a very very high level and he really entirely revolutionizes portrait painting in this in this country he then continues to have an extraordinary effect on portrait painting I mean Lily who is the the follower of essentially the next generation is of course you know it bases his whole Style on Van Dyke because he had this enormous collection himself of paintings and drawings by Van Dyke and essentially I mean he is a Van Dyke follower and then Generation by generation I mean 18th century I mean Gainsborough is inconceivable without Van Dyke Thomas Lawrence is inconceivable without Van Dyke and then for example Sergeant came to the Great Van Dyke exhibition which was at the Royal Academy in 1900 and Sergeant you know becomes more Van Dyke and than Van Dyke so I mean he has an extraordinary influence I mean really portrait painting in this country right up until Sergeant cannot be thought about seriously I mean without the influence of van dijk Van Dyke invented that peculiarly English form the Swagger portrait the Swagger portrait was a full-length portrait a man or a woman wearing extremely fine clothes a sense of refinement and the epitome of good breeding and good manners and of course More Than A Touch of arrogance as well he in some ways inscribe's desire into the the picture in a way that just hadn't been there in English portraiture before however Rich the costumes had been however many jewels and little buttons and um I don't know laces they'd been on these Tudor portraits the the sheer Beauty um of the surfaces um wasn't there so I think he brings that to um English portraiture after his appointment to King Charles for the rest of his career van dijk concentrated almost exclusively on portraiture with Charles himself inevitably the subject matter on many occasions this famous painting shows the English Monarch proudly riding through an arch in the manner of an equestrian Roman Emperor the canvas is some 12 foot by nine in size and was originally hung at the end of a hall in a London Palace further emphasizing van dijk's ability to bring figures out from the canvas with this unusual triple portrait of the king from 1635. the artist again captured the essential nobility of the English monarch but with a greater sense of humanity even to the point of vulnerability this feeling can be detected in a number of Van Dyke's portraits and many believe it reflects a certain uncertainty within the artist's own character but in this case there is also the Intriguing possibility of Doubt within the king himself political storm clouds were already gathering over his Nation just seven years after this canvas was painted England was plunged into the horrors of Civil War but with the most famous Van Dyke's images of Charles also from 1635 there is little in the way of uncertainty or doubt about the king now situated in the Louvre Paris this canvas of Charles hunting Remains the finest visual reminder of this most ill-fated of all English kings the live portrait of Charles shows him as a Huntsman he's standing with a walking stick swaggering again and on the right hand side we've got his horse the horse is bowing its head very decorously and you've got two Grooms as well this is the image of Charles as the most refined the most elegant courtier in the country it was sent to France as a diplomatic gift and of course the attributes of horsemanship and hunting were an international language an international currency it's somewhat informal it's somewhat relaxed I mean this is a royal portrait and yet it really has a very relaxed uh um a feeling about it it seems to me it's in far less formal in the great equestrian portraits in the National Gallery or in the in the Royal collection it's really the beauty in the way the way it's painted not just in this extraordinary painting of the the clothes that he's wearing these marvelous buff colors that are used by Van Dyke also the pose of the I mean the horse too but also there's marvelous landscape that goes away on the left-hand side I mean this extraordinary view into into distance and it's really this combination of the it seems to me of the relaxation of the of the picture the non-formality of a royal portrait the Glorious painting which is so much what Van Dyke does best of the textures of the uh Fabrics that the king is wearing of the clothes that the king is wearing and then this marvelous recessive landscape on the left-hand side of the picture this is a sovereign who believed he ruled by divine right a monarch at the head of a court whose members felt themselves utterly removed from the lives of the Common People this was the world painted by Van dijk in England and he did his job so well that it is now his portraits that more than anything Define that world for us today in this canvas depicting Queen Henrietta we can see a feature that appeared time and again in Van Dyke's portraits the Queen's hands are unusually long and slender positioned in an unusually drooping manner that succeeds in further emphasizing the status of the sitter at this date for an a nobleman or woman one of the most important things is their Department the fact that they stand in the right way and standing in the right way doesn't just mean you you know your feet it shoulders whatever it means the whole of your body should be disposed in a an elegant and graceful fashion and so just in the way that a hand falls you can tell that somebody is aristocratic rather than being bourgeois what he did with his figures in general was to elongate them and make them more elegant and of course this is the what you find in his hands as well that they're painted on purpose he makes the hands very sort of long and elegant tapering fingers which add to sort of impression of sensitivity and refinement in his sitters here you can see that he's on purpose used the hands to say something about the sitter so one hand is placed on a sword so you immediately know that the sitter must be a gentleman because any gentleman carried arms and it's kept in quite an active gesture so it gives you a feeling of the man being a man of action and the other hand is used in an almost contradictory gesture fondling the dog's ear so it shows that okay this chap may be a man of action but he's also sensitive as well both of these were requisites of the ideal courtier according to Etiquette books of the period such as castellonis the courtier so Van Dyke is on purpose using the hands to say something about his sitter in a very sophisticated subtle way van dijk may have painted as many as 50 canvases of the English royal family and artistic devices to enhance their visual status can be repeatedly seen even in his paintings of the royal children [Music] the boy in the center of this image is the Prince of Wales later to become Charles II the mastiff dog is almost as big as he is but the boy Prince is undeniably in control entirely appropriate for a future ruler of his Nation [Music] but Van Dyke's English portraits depicted more than just the ruling Steward family he was on intimate terms with many of the greatest noblemen of the age all of them Keen to be depicted in the so-called Grand manner of which van dijk was now a master here we see the Earl of Warwick typically depicted full length his nobility is immediately apparent but the portrait is in no way stiff by now van dijk was able to convey a sense of relaxation in posture without losing the Dignity of the subject in this case a nobleman with many years experience at sea a fact emphasized by the fighting ships in the background now Van Dyke was a leading figure in London Society the sheer number of commissions forced Van Dyke to develop a studio system where much of the actual painting was carried out by assistance very much in the manner of Reuben's old Antwerp Studio but some critics of Van Dyke believe that despite a very efficient division of labor the artist still took on too heavier workload as evidence they point out that there is a great deal of similarity between many of his later women figures with the benefit of hindsight it is possible to see that some of Van Dyke's later work is not in the same class as his greatest masterpieces this 1636 image of the Earl of Derby and his wife is an example it lacks much of the vibrancy of his greatest portraits with the Countess herself now virtually a character type rather than an individual for many critics it is the masterful depiction of her white satin dress that is the artist's greatest achievement here but it is Testament to Van Dyke's ability that the pressure of his workload in the late 1630s did not affect the popularity of his work we know as he became more popular and more sought after Van Dyke had to employ assistance so he hands over some of the drapery painting so the drapery is not so animated in some of the portraits and the color becomes weakened as well the Royal portraits it seems to me are all by the hand of the master himself essentially I think this is a very practical matter you've got what you're what you're paid for I mean if you were the King You've Got the artist himself unsurprisingly or the queen if you were part of the sort of intimate circle of the of the of the king then you you pretty much got the artist himself if on the other hand you lived in Suffolk and you were just in town that week and you didn't want to pay very much money then you've got your head done by Van Dyke and the rest done by a member of the studio I mean I think essentially he was very practical I mean he was a very practical working artist and he you know there was a scale of charges and you basically paid more if you've got the man himself and you paid less if you've got if you've got the drapery done by members of the studio the Great and the good still clamored to be painted by him and there is little evidence of any customer dissatisfaction one Countess did complain that Van Dyke had made her look fat in one canvas but this was hardly a typical response Van Dyke was not a warts and all portraitist what's the difference between enhancing one's features bringing them out more clearly and that nasty word flattery with it which somehow um means that you're disguising bad you know the Badness or something so I think it's a very very complicated issue and um it's certainly true that people when they saw Van Dyke when they saw the original Sitters of Van Dyke's portraits were very struck by how beautiful he made people look it is not difficult for the modern critic to look on Van Dyke as a portraitist who flattered his subjects but we should not judge artistic attitudes of the 1630s by the standards of our own time in England Van Dyke supplied a specific service to wealthy people grew wealthy himself as a result and left a remarkable artistic Legacy in the process this includes a canvas that for many is the greatest of all his English works it is certainly the biggest this is a depiction of the Earl of Pembroke and his family Pembroke was a great Enthusiast for Van Dyke's work and in 1635 he commissioned a painting that would Express the high status of his whole family the following year Van Dyke completed a huge group portrait it is a canvas almost 11 feet in height and some 16 foot in length the Earl of Pembroke and his family well I think the thing to remember here again is the the interests of the English Patron now what they want is a dynastic image showing them and their heirs lined up in order of seniority and in effect I think what would be in the mind of the patron would be something like those tombs you see where you know you have the father and the mother praying that is and then a whole line of daughters like like little dolls all lined up all praying the girls outside the boys that side and if you could imagine something as as inelegant as that being in the mind of the patron well Van Dyke supplied that basically but he's just made it incredibly elegant the Pembroke family I think is astounding by its sheer size it's 15 by 11 feet and the figures are just about life size it shows the fourth Earl of Pembroke and his wife seated surrounded by his sons and their daughter and also the husband and wife of the family there's always a great problem composing a group portrait how do you fit so many figures in together the solution that Van Dyke comes up with is putting them on stairs so they stand at different levels so their head height is varied and of course this Pembroke portrait is still in the Pembroke family it's still at Wilton House some people when they've looked at the Earl of Pembroke have thought that he looked a bit Shifty and in fact we know that he changed sides during the English Civil War I find it fascinating because he's really brought the technique of a Venetian history painting of a great religious painting by dietitian to English portraiture which is a revolutionary Step at that moment by the time this Monumental image was completed van dijk was one of London society's leading figures there were rumors of romantic Liaisons with some of his female sitters but his only verifiable relationship was with the tempestuous Margaret lemon this was a woman described as being prone to jealousy who once grew so envious of Van Dyke's female subjects that she tried to bite his thumb off to stop him painting again happily her attempt at disfigurement failed and on the 27th of February 1640 Anthony Van Dyke was able to put this dubious figure behind him that day he married Mary Ruffin a lady in waiting to Queen Henrietta here painted by her husband playing the cello they appear to have been happy together and the following year she fell pregnant a settled family life of his own now beckoned for Anthony Van Dyke but tragically it was not to be at the time of the Van Dyke's wedding the bridegroom was already a sick man it is likely that tuberculosis was the cause a desperate King Charles offered 300 pounds to the Doctor Who Could cure his great portraitist but medicine could do nothing on December the 9th 1641 eight days after the birth of his only legitimate daughter Anthony Van Dyke died in London he was just 42 years of age his early death remains a tragedy of art history but there is an undeniable Atmos in its timing within the year the English society that he had depicted so memorably also died split asunder by the horror of Civil War just over seven years later van dijk's great Patron Charles the first was also dead executed by the Victorious parliamentary forces of Oliver Cromwell and the divine right of kings died with him as a politician Charles the first was undoubtedly a flawed figure but his passion for the Arts led to some of the greatest ever work by a Dutch Master being created in the capital city of England right up to the 20th century the work of Anthony Van Dyke was the dominant influence on English portraiture as can be seen clearly in the works of Gainsborough Reynolds and others but in considering the career of Van Dyke we should not forget his earlier achievements in antwer and especially in Italy his talent revealed itself in the early 17th century 400 years later it is still admired across the world [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Perspective

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Keywords: Art Appreciation, Artistic Achievements, Artistic Legacy, Artistic Mastery, British Monarchy, Classic Paintings, Classic Portraiture, Court Painter, Elegant Compositions, English Portraiture, European Art, European Masterpiece, Famous Artists, Historical Figures, Historical Significance, Majestic Portraits, Ornate Details, Perspective, Portrait Commissions, Portrait Gallery, Rich Artistic History

Id: Mu3iI6x7Ze4

Length: 49min 38sec (2978 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 12 2023