The greatest of the pupils of Rubens, the son of a merchant of good
standing, was born at Antwerp, in 1599. At ten years of age he was
studying art under Van Balen, and was registered in the Guild as his
pupil; from him he proceeded to the studio of Rubens. His wonderful
precocity enabled Van Dyck to become a master in the Guild of Antwerp
painters when only nineteen. In 1620 he was engaged as an assistant by
Rubens, and in the following year he was in England employed by James I.
This royal service soon ended, and in 1623 Van Dyck went to Italy; in
Venice he copied many of Titian’s works, and spent some time in Rome,
and a much longer time at Genoa. Wherever he went he was busy with brush
and canvas, and in Genoa he painted many of his best pictures. From
1626 to 1632 Van Dyck was in Antwerp, diligently working at some of his
greatest pictures, historical subjects and portraits. In the Cassel
Gallery there are fourteen of his portraits, among which that of the
“Syndic Meerstraten” is one of the most characteristic of his art at
this period. At the close of these six years of Antwerp work a new world
opened to him. His first visit to England seems to have been unfruitful,
but in 1632 he became one of the court painters of Charles I. Success
and honor now crowned the new works of Van Dyck. He received a salary of
£200 a year as principal painter to the Stuart court, and was knighted
by the king. Nothing succeeds like success, and we find Van Dyck sought
after by the nobility and gentry of England, and at once installed as a
fashionable portrait painter.
Later, after his return to Flanders, in 1640, with his wife, a lady of
the Scottish house of Ruthven, he went to Paris, hoping to obtain from
Louis XIII. the commission to adorn with paintings the largest saloon in
the Louvre, but here he was doomed to disappointment, as the work had
been given to Poussin. Van Dyck returned to England, and found that he
had fallen, like his patron, Charles I., “on evil tongues and evil days.”
The Civil War had commenced. There was no time now for pipe or tabor,
for painting of pictures or curling of lovelocks, and whilst trumpets
were sounding to boot and saddle, and dark days were coming for England,
Van Dyck died in Blackfriars, on the 9th of December, in 1641, and was
buried hard by the tomb of John of Gaunt, in old St. Paul’s.
Possessed of less power of invention than his great master, Van Dyck
shows in his pictures that _feeling_ which is wanting in the works of
Rubens. It is infinitely more pleasant to gaze on a crucifixion, or some
other sacred subject, from the pencil of Van Dyck, than to examine the
more brilliant but soulless treatment of similar works by his master. As
a portrait painter Van Dyck occupies with Titian and Velasquez the first
place. In fertility and production he was equal to Rubens, if we remember
that his artistic life was very brief, and that he died at the age of
forty-two. He lacked the inexhaustible invention which distinguishes
his teacher, and generally confined himself to painting a “Dead Christ”
or a “Mater Dolorosa.” Of Van Dyck’s sacred subjects we may mention the
“Taking of Jesus in Gethsemane” (Museum of Madrid), “Christ on the Cross”
(Munich Gallery), the “Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph” (Vienna),
the famous “Madonna with the Partridges” (St. Petersburg), and the “Dead
Christ,” mourned by the Virgin, and adored by angels, in the Louvre.
Portraits by Van Dyck are scattered widely throughout the galleries of
Europe, and his best are probably in the private galleries of England. In
all his portraits there is that air of refinement and taste which rightly
earned for Van Dyck the name which the Italians gave him, _Pittore
Cavalieresco_.