VAN DYCK
The great painter Rubens lived at Antwerp, a town about as near to
Amsterdam as Dover is to London. Yet despite the proximity of Flanders
and Holland, their religion, politics, social life, and art were very
different in the seventeenth century, as we have already seen.
Rubens was a painter of the prosperous and ruling classes. He was
employed by his own sovereign, by the King of Spain, by Marie de Medicis,
Queen of France, and by Charles I. of England. His remarkable social
and intellectual gifts caused him to be employed also as an ambassador,
and he was sent on a diplomatic errand to Spain; but even then his
leisure hours were occupied in copying the fine Titians in the King's
palace.
One day he was noticed by a Spanish noble, who said to him, 'Does my
Lord occupy his spare time in painting?' 'No,' said Rubens; 'the
painter sometimes amuses himself with diplomacy.'
In his life as in his art he was exuberant. An absurd anecdote of the
time is good enough to show that. Some people, who went to visit him
in his studio at Antwerp, wrote afterwards that they found him hard
at work at a picture, whilst at the same time he was dictating a letter,
and some one else was reading aloud a Latin work. When the visitors
arrived he answered all their questions without leaving off any of
those three occupations! We must not all hope to match Rubens.
Rubens's great ceremonial paintings, containing numerous figures and
commemorating historical scenes in honour of his Royal patrons, were
executed by his own hands, or by the hands he taught and guided, with
great skill and speed. He painted also beautiful portraits of his wife
and family, and pictures of his own medieval castle, which he restored
and inhabited during the last years of his life, with views of the
country stretching out in all directions. He liked a comfortable life
and comfortable-looking people. He painted his own wives as often as
Rembrandt painted Saskia; both were plump enough to make our memories
recur with pleasure to the slenderer figures preferred by Botticelli
and the painters of his school.
To accomplish the great mass of historic, symbolic, and ceremonial
painting that still crowds the walls of the galleries of Europe, Rubens
needed many assistants and pupils, but only one of them, Van Dyck,
rose to the highest rank as a painter.
He was a Fleming by birth, and worked in the studio at Antwerp for
several years as an assistant of Rubens; then he went to Italy to learn
from the great pictures of the Italian Renaissance, as so many Northern
artists wished to do. It has been said that the works of Titian
influenced his youthful mind the most. Van Dyck spent three years in
Genoa, where he was employed by those foremost in its life to paint
their portraits. Many of these superb canvases have been dispersed
to enrich the galleries of both hemispheres, public and private; but
the proud, handsome semblances of some of his sitters, dressed in rich
velvet, pearls, and lace, look down upon us still from the bare walls
of their once magnificent palaces, with that 'grand air' for which
the eye and the brush of Van Dyck have long remained unrivalled.
When he returned to Flanders from Italy, he had attained a style of
painting entirely his own and very different from that of his great
master, Rubens. The William II of Orange picture is an excellent
example of Van Dyck's work. The child is a prince: we know it as plainly
as if Van Dyck had spoken the word before unveiling his canvas. His
erect attitude, his dignified bearing, his perfect self-possession
and ease, show that he has been trained in a high school of manners.
But there is also something in the delicate oval of the face, the
well-cut nose and mouth, and the graceful growth of the hair, that
speak of refined breeding. Distinction is the key-note of the picture.
[Illustration: WILLIAM II. OF ORANGE
From the picture by Van Dyck, in the Hermitage Gallery, Leningrad]
This little Prince had in his veins the blood of William the Silent,
and became the father of our William III. Poor human nature is too
easily envious, and some deny the reality, in fact, of the distinction,
the grace, of Van Dyck's portrayed men and women. Nevertheless, Van
Dyck's vision, guiding his brush, was as rare an endowment as envy
is a common one, and has higher authority to show us what to look for,
to see, and to enjoy.
Van Dyck was the first painter who taught people how they ought to
look, to befit an admirer's view of their aristocratic rank. His
portraits thus express the social position of the sitter as well as
the individual character. Although this has been an aim of
portrait-painters in modern times, when they have been painting people
of rank, it was less usual in the seventeenth century.
There was hardly scope enough in Antwerp for two great painters such
as Rubens and Van Dyck, so in 1632 Van Dyck left Flanders and settled
permanently in England, as Court painter to Charles I. All his life
Charles had been an enthusiastic collector of works of art. Born with
a fine natural taste, he had improved it by study, until Rubens could
say of him: 'The Prince of Wales is the best amateur of painting of
all the princes in the world. He has demanded my portrait with such
insistence that he has overcome my modesty, although it does not seem
to me fitting to send it to a Prince of his importance.'
Two of our pictures, the Richard II. diptych and the Edward VI. of
Holbein, were in his collection, besides many we have mentioned, such
as Holbein's 'Erasmus,' Raphael's cartoons, and Mantegna's 'Triumph
of Caesar.' Before Charles came to the throne he had gone to Spain
to woo the daughter of Philip III. The magnificent Titians in the palace
at Madrid extorted such admiration from the Prince that Philip felt
it incumbent upon him as a host and a Spaniard to offer some of them
to Charles. Charles sent his own painter to copy the rest. He kept
agents all over Europe to buy for him, and spent thousands of pounds
in salaries and presents to the artists at his Court. As in the time
of Henry VIII., there were still no first-rate English painters. James
I. had employed a Fleming, and an inferior Dutchman, whom Charles
retained in his service for a time. Then he experimented with a
second-rate Italian artist, who painted some ceilings which still
exist at Hampton Court. Rubens was too much in demand at other Courts
for Charles to have his exclusive service, but the courtly Van Dyck
was a painter after his own heart. For the first time he had found
an artist who satisfied his taste, and Van Dyck a Court in which he
could paint distinction to his heart's content. Charles would have
squandered money on him if he had then had it to squander. As it was,
he paid him far less than he had paid his inferior predecessors, but
Van Dyck continued to paint for him to the end, and by Heaven's mercy
died himself before the crash came, which overthrew Charles and
scattered his collection.
Between the years 1632 and 1642, Van Dyck painted a great number of
portraits of the King. It is from these that we obtain our vivid idea
of the first Charles's gentleness and refinement. He has a sad look,
as though the world were too much for him and he had fallen upon evil
days. We can see him year by year looking sadder, but Van Dyck makes
the sadness only emphasize the distinction.
Queen Henrietta Maria was painted even more often than the King. She
is always dressed in some bright shimmering satin; sometimes in yellow,
like the sleeve of William II.'s dress, sometimes in the purest white.
She looks very lovely in the pictures, but lovelier still are the groups
of her children. Even James II. was once a bewitching little creature
in frocks with a skull-cap on his head. His sister Mary, aged six,
in a lace dress, with her hands folded in front of her, looks very
good and grown-up. When she became older, though not even then really
grown-up, she married the William of Orange of our picture. He came
from Holland and stayed at the English Court, as a boy of twelve, and
it was then that Van Dyck painted this portrait of him.
Later on, when they were married, Van Dyck painted them together, but
William was older and looked a little less beautiful, and Mary had
lost the charm of her babyhood. With all her royal dignity and solemnity,
she is a perfect child in these pictures. Refined people, loving art,
have grown so fond of the Van Dyck children, that often when they wish
their own to look particularly bewitching at some festivity, they dress
them in the costumes of the little Mary and Elizabeth Stuart, and revive
the skull-caps and the lace dresses for a fresh enjoyment.
Van Dyck's patrons in England, other than the King, were mostly
noblemen and courtiers. They lived in the great houses, which had been
built in many parts of the country during the reigns of Elizabeth and
her successors. The rooms were spacious, with high walls that could
well hold the large canvases of Van Dyck. Sometimes a special gallery
was built to contain the family portraits, and Van Dyck received a
commission to paint them all. Often, several copies of the same picture
were ordered at one time to be sent as presents to friends and relations.
Usually the artist painted but one himself; the rest were copies by
his assistants.
Van Dyck's portraits were designed to suit great houses. In a small
room, which a portrait by Holbein would have decorated nobly, a canvas
by Van Dyck would have been overpowering. In spite of the fact that
the expressions on the faces are often intimate and appealing,
domesticity is not the mark of his art. In Van Dyck's picture of our
'heir of fame,' the white linen, the yellow satin, and the armour please
us as befitting the lovely face. There is a glimmer of light on the
armour, but you see how different is Van Dyck's treatment of it from
Rembrandt's. Van Dyck painted it as an article of dress in due
subordination to the face, not as an opportunity for reflecting light
and becoming the most important thing in the picture.
We have seen how Rembrandt, Peter de Hoogh, Cuyp, Rubens, and Van Dyck
were all contemporaries, born within an area of ground smaller far
than England. Yet the range of their subjects was widely different,
and each painter gave his individuality full play. The desires of the
public were not stereotyped and fixed, as they had been when all alike
wanted their religious aspirations expressed in art. The patrons of
that epoch had various likings, as we have to-day, and the painter
developed along the lines most congenial to himself. Unless he could
make people like what he enjoyed painting, he could not make a living.
If they had no eyes to learn to see, he might remain unappreciated,
like Rembrandt, until long after his death. Yet Van Dyck's portraits
were popular. People could scarcely help enjoying an art that showed
them off to such advantage. Having found a style that suited him, he
adhered to it consistently, thenceforward making but few experiments.
This little picture before us is an admirable example of the gentle
poetic grace and refinement always recalled to the memory by the name
of Van Dyck. So long as men prize the aspect of distinction, which
he was the first Northern painter to express in paint, Van Dyck's
reputation will endure.