Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/80

Rh 64 VAN D Y C K procession of the knights of the Garter, a really grandiose composition, engraved by Cooper. We know from Bellori that Van Dyck had suggested through his friend Sir Kenelm Digby, for the banqueting room at Whitehall, a series of decorations illustrating the history of the order of the Garter, and that the king had been much pleased with the idea. The plan, however, failed through the ex cessively high price asked by the painter, and perhaps also because the king had thought of having the work done in tapestry. Van Dyck s pension was five years in arrear, and, instead of 560, he received finally, besides his pen sion, only 200. When the news of Rubens s death reached London (June 1640) Van Dyck contemplated a return to his native country, and a letter from Ferdinand of Austria to Philip IV. speaks of his intended journey to Antwerp on St Luke s Day (18th October). Rubens had left unfinished a series of paintings commanded by the king of Spain, and from correspondence published by Professor Justi we learn that Van Dyck had been thought of to give them the finishing touch. But he absolutely refused to finish them. It was then agreed that he should paint an independent canvas destined to complete the series. Van Dyck was delighted with this order, and Ferdinand tells his brother that he returned to London in great haste &quot;to make pre parations for his change of residence ; possibly,&quot; adds the letter, &quot;he may still change his mind, for he is stark mad.&quot; Whether Van Dyck found it possible to work during his short stay in the Netherlands is a matter of doubt. In the museum at The Hague are six medallion portraits of Constantino Huygens and his children, dated 164-0. They have till lately been ascribed to Van Dyck, but are now said to be by Adrian Hannemann, a Dutchman, and one of his ablest assistants. In any case they are of small importance. Most authors suppose that Van Dyck s prin cipal object in travelling to the Continent was to be en trusted with the decoration of one of the galleries of the Louvre. There may be some truth in this, for Mariette speaks of a letter he saw, written by Claude Vignon, the French painter, in January 1641, asking Langlois for an introduction to Van Dyck, who was then in Paris. Unfor tunately the great painter was thwarted in his aspirations. His health was beginning to fail. After his return to London he was frequently obliged to interrupt his work ; and a letter written (13th August) from Ptichmond by Lady Anne Roxburgh to Baron W. van Brederode at The Hague states that the portraits of the Princess Mary had been greatly delayed through Van Dyck s illness, and that the prince s (William II. of Orange) would be ready in eight days. &quot;As Van Dyck intends leaving England in the course of ten or twelve days at latest,&quot; she adds, &quot;he will take the paintings himself to the princess of Orange.&quot; These portraits, now in the museum at Amsterdam, are the last Van Dyck painted in England. They are considered to be inferior ; and the last edition of the catalogue terms them copies. But of works dated 1639 the portrait of Lady Pembroke, in the gallery at Darmstadt, is a really fine specimen ; and to the same year belongs a full-length por trait of Arthur Goodwin at Chatsworth. The twin portrait of Thomas Carew and Thomas Killigrew, in the royal collec tion, dated 1638, is certainly most delicate, but very weak in tone and slight in handling. Van Dyck sailed in Septem ber, and probably spent some time with his Antwerp friends. In October he reached Paris, and succeeded in obtaining some important work, when, on 16th November, he was compelled to resign his commissions on account of the state of his health. Scarcely three weeks later (9th December 1641) he died at his residence at Blackfriars. Van Dyck was buried in old St Paul s, where a Latin inscription was placed on his tomb by Charles I. An elegy in Cowley s Miscellanies speaks, not only of the painter s talent, but of his amiable disposition. We may perhaps point to the coincidence that a Mrs Cowley is in Van Dyck s will (of 1st December) named guardian of his child, Justiniana Anna, born only eight days before her father s death. The painter had in the Nether lands an illegitimate daughter, Maria Theresia, who was entrusted to his sister, and to whom he bequeathed 4000. The name of her mother is not known. Not long after her husband s death Lady Van Dyck became the second wife of Sir Richard Pryse of Gogerddan in Cardiganshire. She was dead in 1645. Justiniana Van Dyck, who was married when scarcely twelve years old to Sir John Stepney of Prendergast, was also something of an artist : she painted a Crucifixion, with four angels receiving Christ s blood in chalices. A similar subject had been painted by Van Dyck, as Bellori tells us, for the duke of Northumberland. After the Restoration a pension of 200 for. life was granted to Justiniana Van Dyck, who dice] before 1690. Van Dyck is one of the most brilliant figures in the history of art. That he should, in the same subjects chosen by Rubens, have attained the same degree of expression was scarcely possible. Rubens was exceptional precisely through the sweep and power of his ima gination ; but Van Dyck, applying the same principles to portrait painting, was no less exceptional. Titian, Raphael, Rembrandt, Velazquez, and Frans Hals are not, on the whole, superior to him in this branch. They often delight us with their technical excel lence or penetrating study of individuality, but their conception remains entirely different from that of Van Dyck. With him as with Rubens physiognomical interpretation is so intimately con nected with picturesque necessity that his portraits scarcely ever fail to leave an indelible impression on the mind. Burnet observes that with Van Dyck the union of the figure and the background seems to have been a principle, not only in respect of light and shade, but also of colour. Thus the shapes of his lights are ex tended or doubled by means of a curtain in the background, &c. Hence Van Dyck, quite unlike the Dutch, is not what may be termed an intimate portraitist. In his eyes a prince, a warrior, a statesman, an artist belong to the world and to posterity, and in the realization of this idea he attains a degree of excellence seldom if ever attained before him. His works may be found lacking in solidity or displaying an unnecessary amount of motion in attitude, but these defects are easily compensated by a sense of proportion, an elegance in outline, a variety of conception united in his best works to the most able technic. Properly speaking, Van Dyck cannot be said to have formed a school. He was followed to London by some of his earlier colla borators, and there soon met a considerable number of others. Jan van Reyn, David Beek, Adrian Hannemann, Mathew Merian, John Bockhorst (Lang Jan), Remy van Leemput, and Peter Thys were foremost among foreigners, Henry Stone and William Dobson among Englishmen. To their assistance the master owed much ; but they are also responsible for the vast number of constantly- recurring copies which go by his name. It often requires a very discriminating eye to distinguish some of these copies from the original paintings. Nevertheless after Van Dyck s death many of his coadjutors produced works of undeniable merit. No school more strikingly reflects the influence of Van Dyck than the British school. Stone and Dobson were, properly speaking, the most for tunate of his contiuuators ; and there is little doubt that such masters as Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, and Raeburn owe a large measure of their superiority to their study of his works. Though Van Dyck s reputation greatly suffered through the numerous copies he allowed his pupils to take from his works, the case is otherwise with engraving : Vorsterman, Pontius, Peter de Jode, P. Balliu, and S. Bolswert were seldom more fortunate than when under his guidance. De Jode s St Augustine, Bolswert s Ecce Homo and Crucifixion, Vorsterman s Deposition, and especially Pontius s Herman Joseph rank among the masterpieces of the art of engraving. Van Dyck was himself an incomparable etcher, and with the needle arrived at a degree of excellence scarcely inferior to that exhibited in his paintings. Such prints as the portraits of Vorsterman, John de Wael, Snyders, Josse de Momper, Adarn van Noort, and above all his own effigy, bear witness to his prodigious knowledge of design. Print collectors pay extravagant prices for a first proof taken from the plates engraved by Van Dyck himself. Mr Sackville Bale s copy of the portrait of Wawerius fetched 600. Van Dyck also employed some of the best engravers of his time for the production of a gallery of illustrious heads, men and women, of different countries. Whether all were taken from life is ques tionable. Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein he can hardly have met. Dn Breucq, the architect, he never knew. But all the sketches and drawings were done by himself, and are often met with in public and private galleries. The engravings are some times very beautiful and in their first states very rare. Published successively by Martin van der Enden, Giles Hendrickx, and John Meyssens, the collection originally consisted of sixteen warriors and statesmen, twelve scholars, and fifty-two artists. Hendrickx raised the number to ninety-nine, and used as a frontispiece the