Van Dyck, SIR ANTHONY, portrait and history painter, was born at Antwerp, 22d March 1599, the seventh child of Frans Van Dyck, a silk and woollen manufacturer of the city, and his second wife, Maria Cuypers, a lady celebrated for her skill in embroidery. In 1609 he entered the studio of Hendrik Van Balen, a capable painter of the place; in his fifteenth year he began to study under Rubens, and in 1618 he was admitted a master of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke. He soon came to be recognised as the most promising of the pupils of Rubens. In the contract, dated 1620, for the decoration of the Jesuit Church of Antwerp it was stipulated that he was to assist his master in the production of thirty-nine pictures; and the 'Christ Bearing the Cross,' in the church of the Dominicans, may be referred to as a work of this period. In 1620 the Earl of Arundel was advised that 'his works are beginning to be scarcely less esteemed than those of his master;' and in the end of that year Van Dyck made a brief visit to England, when he appears to have executed the full-length of James I. at Windsor. In 1623, by the advice of Rubens, he started to study in Italy; and, on his way, he is said to have fallen in love with a beautiful country girl of the little village of Saventhem, near Brussels, and to have delayed there, painting his famous 'St Martin dividing his Cloak,' still in the parish church, and a 'Holy Family,' since lost. The investigations of M. A. Wauters and other critics, however, have thrown doubt upon the details of this traditional episode in the painter's life.
Arrived in Venice, he devoted himself to an enthusiastic study of the masterpieces of Titian, Giorgione, and Veronese; and, passing to Genoa, he executed there a series of noble portraits, strongly impressed with the influence of Italian art, many of which are still preserved in the palaces of the families for whom they were painted. In Rome he resided for nearly two years, producing a 'Crucifixion' for Cardinal Bentivoglio, and for the pope an 'Ascension' and an 'Adoration of the Magi.' After visiting Turin and Sicily, he again worked in Genoa, and by 1628 he had returned to his native city, where he painted his great 'Ecstasy of St Augustine' for the chapel of the Augustine monastery, a work spoiled by the changes insisted on by the monks, various subjects for the Célibataires, and the splendid 'Christ crucified between two Thieves' for the church of the Récollets at Mechlin, now in the cathedral there. It was about this period that he executed the fine series of grisaille portraits of eminent contemporaries which were published as engravings by Martin Vanden Enden, and with additions in 1641 by Giles Hendrix of Antwerp. In some twenty of these plates the painter himself etched the heads, and in their early states, before the line-work of the engravers has been added, these prints are greatly valued. The astonishing spirit, vigour, and expressiveness of the lines by means of which the features are rendered entitle Van Dyck to rank as one of the master etchers of the world.
In 1629 the painter again visited England, but he received little encouragement, and soon returned. We next find him at the Hague, painting the Prince of Orange and his family, Christian, Duke of Brunswick, and Count Ernest of Mansfeld; and in the spring of 1632 he again came to London, under the patronage of the Earl of Arundel, and was warmly received by Charles I., who had been impressed by his portrait of Lanière the musician, and had purchased his 'Armida and Rinaldo.' He was knighted by the king, appointed his principal painter in ordinary, installed at Blackfriars, and assigned a country residence in Eltham Palace; and in 1633 a pension of £200 was bestowed upon him, which, however, was very irregularly paid. One of his earliest works during this residence in England was the group of the king, queen, and two of their children, at Windsor; and during the next eight years he painted nearly every distinguished person connected with the court. About 1639 he married, through the influence of the king, Maria Ruthven, granddaughter of the first Earl of Gowrie. Leading a careless life and lavish in his pleasures, Van Dyck suffered from pecuniary straits; and frequently he found difficulty in obtaining payment for the royal commissions. He proposed to decorate the walls of the banqueting-room at Whitehall—the ceiling of which had been painted by Rubens—with a history of the order of the Garter, and prepared sketches of the subjects, but the work was never carried out. The greater part of 1634 and 1635 was spent in the Netherlands, when he painted Ferdinand of Austria, brother of Philip IV., now at Madrid, and many other portraits, and such religious subjects as 'The Adoration of the Shepherds,' in the church at Termonde, and 'The Deposition,' now in the Antwerp Museum; and at this time he was elected honorary president of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke. In 1640 he visited his native city for the last time, and then passed to Paris, hoping to be employed by Louis XIII. on the decoration of the Louvre; but here again he was unsuccessful, though he received other commissions. On his return to England he found that political troubles were distracting the country. His own health was now permanently broken, and he died in his house at Blackfriars, 9th December 1641, and was buried in Old St Paul's.
By universal consent Van Dyck is one of the most refined and graceful of painters. His portraits are full of expression, easy and natural in their attitudes, and the hands, in particular, are most elegant in form and pose. His religious subjects are distinguished by correctness of design, delicate blending of tones, and truth and purity of colouring. Most of the great English galleries contain examples of Van Dyck's art. Rich collections of his portraits were included in the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, and the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866; and in 1887 a special exhibition of 166 of his works was brought together in the Grosvenor Gallery. Seven of his works are in the National Gallery. These include his portrait of Cornelius Vander Geest, and the noble equestrian portrait of Charles I., purchased for £17,500 from the Blenheim Palace collection in 1885.
See Smith's Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, pt. iii. (Lond. 1841); William Hookham Carpenter's Pictorial Notices, a Memoir of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, with a Catalogue of his Etchings (Lond. 1844); Robert Dohme's Kunst und Künstler—'A. Van Dyck,' by Carl Lemcke in vol. i. (Leip. 1875); F. Wibiral's L'Iconographie d'Antoine Van Dyck d'après les recherches de H. Weber (Leip. 1877); P. R. Head, Van Dyck and Hals ('Great Artists' series, 1879); A. Michiel's Van Dyck et ses Élèves (Paris, 1881); J. Guiffrey's Van Dyck, sa Vie et son Œuvre (1882; trans. 1896); Eaux-fortes de Van Dyck reproduites par Amand-Durand (n.d.); Knackfuss (trans. 1899); Ernest Law, Van Dyck's Pictures at Windsor Castle (1899); and Lionel Cust (1900).