Van Dyck completed Rubens by adding to his achievement portraits
absolutely worthy of his master's brush, better than Rubens' own. He
created in his own country an art which was original, and consequently
he has his share in the creation of a new art. Besides this he did yet
more: he begot a whole school in a foreign country, the English
school--Reynolds, Lawrence, Gainsborough, and I would add to them nearly
all the genre painters who are faithful to the English tradition, and
the most powerful landscape painters issue directly from Van Dyck, and
indirectly from Rubens through Van Dyck. These are high claims. And so
posterity, always just in its instincts, gives Van Dyck a place apart
between the men of the first and those of the second rank. The world has
never decided the exact precedence which ought to be his in the
procession of the masters, and since his death, as during his life, he
seems to have held the privilege of being placed near the throne and of
making a stately figure there.
_Fromentin._