Sir Anthony van Dyck (Tara Olivero)
Anthony van Dyck was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1599 to a wealthy
silk-merchant. At the age of ten, he was apprenticed to Hendrik van Balen, who
painted small cabinet pictures and was the dean of the Antwerp Saint Luke’s
Guild, which van Dyck registered as a master in by 1618. He began working as an
assistant for the more experienced Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, helping
him with large commissions such as the designs for his Decius Mus tapestry series and ceiling decorations at the Church of
Saint Charles Borromeo in Antwerp. Being Rubens’ assistant, however, did not
restrict his own painting career; his first independent works are dated around
1615, when he would have been only 17. By 1620 his work was almost as admired
as Rubens’.
Although he was also skilled at sketching and engraving, and later
tried watercolor, van Dyck’s preferred medium was oil painting, and
specifically figure composition and portraiture. He worked in the service of
James I and the court of England around in 1620, producing mostly figure
compositions, but next turned to portraiture in Italy around 1621-1627, where
his portraits of aristocrats were incredibly well-received. Portraits were
typically commissioned for personal reasons and were intended to cultivate a
specific image of the sitter’s status and identity. Van Dyck was exalted for
this ability to convey the sitter’s personality and character in his elegant
portraits, and he was considered a master of color and composition.
Specifically, he was talented at mixing colors to create the illusion of
texture in both shadow and light. He was also well known for his flesh tones,
his depiction of reflective surfaces such as armor or silk fabric, and his
choice of bold tints against darker backgrounds, which seems to have been influenced
by Italian art.
Major inspirations for van Dyck’s portraiture were the works of Titian
(he personally owned nineteen Titian paintings and sketched many others
throughout his travels around Italy) as well as Rubens’ paintings he came
across in Genoa; in fact, art experts sometimes still find difficulty in
attempting to differentiate the works of van Dyck with Rubens. However, the
Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists notes that “van Dyck’s style was typically
less energetic and more nervously sensitive than that of his supremely robust
mentor, reflecting differences in character and composition (van Dyck was
highly strung in temperament and comparatively slight in physique).” His
portraits of aristocrats typically had a distinctive “type,” where the aristocrat
was pictured as being slender, aloof, and proud. The setting and luxurious
costuming of the sitter also typically contributed to a sense of grandeur. For
the next 150 years, van Dyck’s portraits served as inspiration for later
artists, especially Thomas Gainsborough in the later 1700s.
He spent time in the Netherlands before returning to the English court
permanently. Some of his patrons throughout his life included the Archduchess
Isabella, governess of the Spanish Netherlands; Frederik Hendrik, the prince of
Orange; Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart; Maria de’ Medici of France; and
Charles I and Henrietta Maria of England. In 1632, he was named court painter
to Charles I as well as being knighted; his glamorous portraits of Charles I
and the court are typically the most well-known of van Dyck’s work. For the
rest of his career (until his death in 1641) he moved between London, Antwerp,
and Paris to work on various projects. In addition to portraiture, he painted
landscapes, mythological compositions, and emotional religious works such as
altarpieces for churches in Antwerp. Another one of his most extensive projects
was called the Iconography, a series
of printed engravings and etchings of aristocrats, artists, and other famous
individuals of the time period; the prints were compiled into book form and
sold posthumously around 1645.
Interested parties can access some of van Dyck’s paintings on his
page at the National Gallery website as well as on my
presentation at this link.
Sources:
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