Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/118

 Van Dyck Nassau (at Panshanger), and the Prince of Carignan-Savoy (at Berlin). He remained more than a year in the Netherlands, and painted at Brussels, among other works, an immense picture of the magistrates of that city in session, which was unfortunately destroyed by fire at a later date. He did not return to England until the end of 1635, when he resumed his duties to the court and nobility until the middle of 1640. It was in these years that he executed the greater part of those works which are scattered among the mansions of the nobility in England and in the royal palaces, including the well-known groups of the children of the king and queen, first the three children in 1635, and then the five in 1637. There is hardly any noble family of antiquity in England which does not boast of an ancestor painted by Van Dyck. Standing as they did on the brink of the civil wars, the gallant cavaliers and fair ladies of the court form a regiment of youth and beauty, of dignity and heroism, that has never been rivalled elsewhere, and are in themselves a history of their time, written from one point of view. Whether singly, a host too innumerable to deal with here, in pairs, such as the Lord John and Lord Bernard Stuart (at Cobham Hall), the Lords Digby and Bedford (at Althorp), the Strafford and his secretary (at Wentworth Woodhouse), the Carew and Killigrew (at Windsor), in family groups, such as the Herbert family (at Wilton), or great ladies, such as the famous Countesses of Carlisle, Bedford, and Leicester (at Petworth), the galaxy of Van Dyck's portraits has continued to entrance the world. It is small wonder that the cause of the cavaliers has ever been dear to the lovers of beauty and romance, and that Charles I's faults and weaknesses have been redeemed in their sight by the fascinating melancholy of his face as portrayed by Van Dyck.

Considering that Van Dyck's working residence in England was only about six years and a half, and that a large part of this time was taken up by commissions for the court, it is obviously impossible that the immense number of portraits, with their innumerable repetitions, which are credited to him, should have been entirely the work of his own hand. Fortunately Jabach, an art amateur and dealer of Cologne, has left a record of Van Dyck's method: how he gave each sitter a fixed period for a sitting, and, after making notes of the costume and draperies, handed the portrait and his notes to his assistants to complete. When the portrait neared its finish he went over the whole himself, and it is therefore difficult, in the case of many versions of the same portrait of equal excellence, to declare that any one is actually the original. Many of Van Dyck's drawings of this kind are to be found in the British Museum, the Louvre, and other public collections. He is said always to have received his sitters richly dressed himself. Throughout his life in England Van Dyck lived a life of wealth and luxury. He was always super-sensitive to the charms of the fair sex, and while he resided at Blackfriars and Eltham he was never out of women's toils. One fair lady, Margaret Lemon by name, ruled his house, and he has left some most attractive portraits of her. Even his own wealth could not cope with the extravagance of his living, and save him from haggling with the king about his ill-paid pension, or driving hard bargains with his lady sitters. At last the king and queen found him a wife among the ladies of the court, Mary, daughter of Patrick Ruthven, granddaughter of the Earl of Gowrie, and related to some of the ruling families in the land. Van Dyck agreed willingly to the marriage, which took place in 1640, much to the anger of his mistress, who is said to have tried to mutilate his right hand, with which he painted. The cloud of civil war was, however, beginning to darken the horizon. The payments from the royal exchequer became more irregular. Van Dyck's health began to suffer from his life of combined pleasure and hard work. He is said also to have injured his health in the study of alchemy, probably in company with his friend, Sir Kenelm Digby [q. v.] He was disappointed in a scheme which he had drawn out for decorating the banqueting-hall at Whitehall with a procession of the knights of the Garter (his original sketch is at Belvoir Castle). His portraits of himself in later years show the face of a delicate voluptuary. One well-known portrait, in which the painter points to a sunflower, probably indicates the vicissitudes of his fortunes.

In June 1640 Rubens died at Antwerp, leaving his school of painters and engravers without a head, and numerous commissions, including a series of paintings for the king of Spain, unfinished. The only painter capable of filling his place was Van Dyck. In September 1640 he left England for Antwerp, where he was invited to complete the pictures for the king of Spain. This Van Dyck declined to do, though he offered to paint fresh ones himself. He fully intended to return permanently to Antwerp, but early in 1641 he went to Paris, hearing that there was a project for the decoration of the Louvre, and hoping to obtain such a commission as Rubens had secured in the case of the Luxembourg palace. In this endeavour, however,