January 29, 2024 • 38 mins
Anthony van Dyck was a commercially successful painter in Antwerp and Italy, but he may have had the most influence in England when he served as court painter to King Charles I.
Research:
- Blake, Robin. “Anthony Van Dyck.” Ivan R. Dee. 2009.
- “Anthony Van Dyck.” The Art Story. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/van-dyck-anthony/
- Maddicott, Hilary. “‘Qualis vita, finis ita’: The life and death of Margaret Lemon, mistress of Van Dyck.” The Burlington Magazine. February 2018. https://www.burlington.org.uk/media/_file/generic/article-42279.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2dE5AscipktnTy4QDCc0CN_cYOlVYCPkNerrHsR0oi0V4zCUdiOpEz2to
- Solly, Meilan. “Digital Art Detectives Identify Original van Dyck Portrait.” Smithsonian. Oct. 10, 2019. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/digital-art-detectives-identify-original-van-dyck-portrait-spanish-royal-180973308/
- Liedtke, Walter. “Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641): Paintings.” The Met. October 2003. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rvd_p/hd_rvd_p.htm
- Vance, Heidi. “15 Facts About Anthony van Dyck: A Man Who Knew Many Faces.” The Collector. Aug. 16, 2020. https://www.thecollector.com/anthony-van-dyck-painter/
- “In focus: Sir Anthony van Dyck.” National Portrait Gallery. https://www.npg.org.uk/assets/files/pdf/learning/NPG_VanDyck_14.pdf
- “The Iconographie and Other Early Portrait Prints after Van Dyck.” The Frick Collection.
- https://www.frick.org/exhibitions/van_dyck/iconographie
- White, Christopher. “Anthony van Dyck and the Art of Portraiture.” Modern Art Press. 2021.
- Wood, Jeremy. “Dyck, Sir Anthony [formerlyAntoon] Van.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Sept. 23, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/28081
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So we haven't had an
art episode in a minute, so I was having a
jones about it. Yeah, when I first read this outline
and it said that, I was like, haven't we And
then I went, oh, no, we really haven't. I always
feel guilty because I'll sometimes do a couple clumped together
and then I'm like, I shouldn't only talk about artists,
(00:35):
and then I will shy away from them for a
little while. But it's been on minutes, so I feel
okay about it. So today we are going to talk
about Anthony van Dyck, and right out of the gate,
I feel like we have to talk about his name
because you'll see it written a million different ways. There
is a reason for that, and also pronounced right slightly differently.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I feel like I looked at him million videos of
like art curators and art historians, and they all kind
of default to the anglicized Anthony van Dyke. But you'll
see like van Dyke written with a J in it
or with a W in it in a very Italian style,
(01:21):
where it's Antonio written Italian style spelling, and then Van
Dyke is one word run together with no differential of
capital letters to separate Van and Dyke. It's like one
big thing, even Van Dyke with a B, etc. There
are a lot of different ways, and the reason is
he moved around a lot, and he didn't seem especially
(01:42):
hung up on there's one correct way to do my name.
Even when he got accolades in various countries, he would
be like, no, just do it this way, which I
find really really interesting about him. I also feel like
we should mention we'll talk about the names of his
paintings in this but these are names that the most
part were attributed well after he made them, and sometimes
(02:03):
they're just a way that various art historians have identified
the painting, usually by the contents of the painting. He
wasn't out there, to the best of our knowledge, giving
them any kind of naming convention that we're not privy to.
I really really like his work, and so he's been
on my list for a long time. I think he's
(02:24):
a genius and I love him, and I also just
think he's an interesting guy because he seems kind of
relaxed in some ways, and he's tied to a lot
of interesting things in art history, so that's what you
get today.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
We'll start, of course, at the beginning. Anthony van Dyke
was born on March twenty second, fifteen ninety nine, in Antwerp.
At the time, Antwerp was part of the Spanish Netherlands.
His father, Franz, was a successful silk merchant, and his mother,
Maria Kuiper's, was Franz's second wife. There were a dozen
children in this family. Anthony was the seventh of them.
(03:01):
The family lived on Growth Market, which is Antwerp's central square,
until they moved to a bigger house in sixteen oh seven.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
But just a few weeks after they made that move
to their bigger house, his mother Maria died, and from
that moment that privileged, comfortable life that the Van Dykes
had enjoyed kind of began to unravel. Franz, his father,
did not remarry, though he did have other relationships, and
it seems as though without a mother to care for
them full time, the kids were left largely to their
(03:32):
own devices. Simultaneously, Franz started to really struggle with the
business side of his life as well as his personal life.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
When Anthony was ten, he started to formally study painting
under Hendrik von Balin at the Antwerp Artist Guild. He
didn't stay with Van Balen for very long, though, and
it's not clear when their teaching arrangement ended. The oldest
surviving Van Dyke painting was made when the artist was
only four team in sixteen thirteen. This is sometimes called
(04:03):
portrait of a man, or the slightly more descriptive portrait
of an old man, sometimes portrait of an unknown seventy
year old man. This is a bust up rendering of
a man in a stiff Elizabethan style rough collar. He
has a robust white mustache and appointed goateee. Today this
(04:24):
is part of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of
Belgium's collection, and it serves as an early example of
the way Van Dyke's career trajectory always seemed to be
destined for portraits, although that was not the only style
of painting he was interested in.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
At the age of fifteen or possibly sixteen, Anthony painted
a self portrait. This is once again a bust and
head image, with the artist seen from the side and
his head is turned to face the viewer. It is
overall a dark composition. He has reddish, curly hair, his
face is very pale and tinged pink, and his reddish
(05:01):
lips foremost very sharp contrast to the background. In his clothes,
there's also a line of white that peeks out above
his collar. It's his undershirt, but that line of white
creates this sort of diagonal bisecting of the overall piece.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
At this point, Van Dyke appears to have left the
tutelage of Van Balen and was working as an independent artist.
But that's odd. Per the guild rules of Antwerp, he
should not have been able to establish himself as a
professional artist before being granted membership in that guild. He
was too young to do that at this point. He
(05:40):
didn't become a member of the guild until sixteen eighteen.
That is also the year that Van Dyke began to
study under Peter Paul Rubens, and at this time Rubens
was forty one and he had gained a reputation as
one of Antwerp's best artists. This association would link the
two men forever Historically, in sixteen seventy two, Giovanni Pietro
(06:00):
Bellori published the work Levite di petori sculptori at architeti
Moderni Those are the Lives of the modern painters, sculptors
and Architects, And in this work he described the two
men meeting in a rather romanticized way, saying that Van
Dyke just sort of showed up at Peter Paul Rubin's
school as a quote young man possessed of such noble
(06:22):
generosity of manners and so fine a talent for painting
that then it goes on to say that, of course
Rubens recognized that having this young man as a student
was going to bring honor to his school. But that's
really a speculative take on this meeting. We don't know
much at all in the way of specifics about the
earliest associations of these two men. Art historian Christopher White's
(06:46):
twenty twenty one biography of Van dyke speculates that although
Rubens and Van Dyke were very different personalities, Rubens may
have recognized some similarities in their backgrounds and their turbulent
family lives, and that may have been part of him
deciding to become a mentor. We truly don't.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Know, though, but Van Dyke, we do know, became not
only a student of Rubens but also an assistant, giving
up his independent career status to do so, and at
some point he started living with Rubens, although the exact
date that happened is unknown, He's mentioned as being there
and working on pieces with the master in letters and
notes of various people in sixteen twenty. We're going to
(07:29):
talk more about the nature of their friendship and relationship
in a bit, but this living situation, to be clear,
was not indicative of anything in particular other than that
Van Dyke was working closely with the senior artist. It
would not have been.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Uncommon for an assistant to do so and move in.
In the early years of his professional career, Van Dyke
painted a lot of portraits of Belgian aristocracy. Most of
these portraits are from the bust up, although some go
down to the knees. The poses all tend to be
pretty similar, with the subject holding some kind of accessory.
(08:02):
It quickly became apparent that he was incredibly skilled in
painting fabrics. Sometime in sixteen eighteen or sixteen nineteen he
painted portrait of a man drawing on his glove and
a married couple, both of them echo paintings by sixteenth
century Flemish artists.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, there have been some really interesting studies that modern
historians have done where they have found very similarly posed
paintings of other people that previous artists had done. So
Van Dyke was clearly like using his knowledge and his
study of art to inform the way he was working.
He was not only working in portraiture, though he also
(08:40):
painted historical subjects. He also created works that blended historical
figures or thebes with imagery of contemporary models. That's a
practice that was very popular at the time. And within
these works, his depictions of the people in the paintings
are always just incredibly detailed, like many portraits within the
Greater World work. So when we're talking about this, we're
(09:01):
saying like he would paint, you know, some important historical
or biblical scene, and people that were contemporaries of him
would be cast in roles in those pieces. An interesting
note is that he usually sketched out his religious and
historical paintings before actually putting brush to canvas, but he
did not usually do the same for portraits.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
One of the interesting and also frustrating aspects of all
this early work is that while we know that most
of his works were commissions from the nobility of Antwerp,
we don't know who a lot of the people in
the paintings are. There's not a lot of notation or
surviving record keeping regarding these works. In some cases, art
(09:43):
historians have made sort of best guesses by piecing together
information that survived, but these it's just that it's educated guesses.
One that we do know is a portrait of Cornelius
Vandergeese that serves as a perfect example of how very
skill Van Dyke was even at an early age. The portrait,
(10:03):
which is almost a close up of the subject's face,
was created in sixteen nineteen or sixteen twenty, and the
eyes in particular are rendered with such skill that they
look almost like a photograph. Around the same time that
he painted it, in the summer of sixteen twenty, there's
mention of Van Dyke in a letter from Amsterdam to
the Duke of Arundel in London, praising him as being
(10:27):
almost as admired as Rubens, but lamenting that he seems
reluctant to leave Antwerp.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yeah, London was very eager to try to get Van
Dyke to come and visit, and I will say that
painting that Tracy just described of Cornelius vander Geeste is
one of my very favorites. It is so striking and beautiful.
At the age of eighteen, Van Dyke undertook a work
that had nothing to do with his art. He filed
a lawsuit against his family. This is tied to his
(10:58):
father's personal struggle, and one of those struggles involved a
woman that he had been involved with who began to
very publicly argue with him and accuse him of wrongdoing. Basically,
she was in the street kind of yelling accusations. In
terms of available information, it's unclear what specifically those accusations were.
But because of all of this turmoil and like the
(11:20):
public embarrassment going on, Van Dyke's brothers in law filed
a motion with the court to be given control of
Franz van Dyke's finances because he was not doing a
good job of looking after the family's interests. Anthony filed
his own papers asking for the court to name a
separate appointee to handle Franz's money, as he did not
(11:40):
trust his brothers in law with it. Even though he
did recognize that his father really couldn't handle things. At
that point, the brothers in law did get control and
Anthony had to go to court again to get the
money that he and his younger siblings were owed by
those brothers in law, and it would appear that this
family situation went from strained to fairly terrible, at least
with his relations by marriage. Coming up, we'll talk about
(12:04):
Van Dyke's first trip to England, but first we will
have a sponsor break. In November sixteen twenty Van Dyke
traveled to England for the first time, and it's believed
that he was persuaded to do so by one or
(12:25):
more art collectors there. As I mentioned earlier, they were
eager to get him to England. There he was commissioned
as a painter by King James the First, reportedly at
a rate of one hundred pounds per year, but he
didn't stay an entire year. He didn't stay even half
a year. He left after four months in February of
sixteen twenty one. He only painted a few works during
(12:47):
his time in London, including a historical portrait of the
Duke and Duchess of Buckingham as Venus and Adonis, another
and perhaps more important was a portrait of the Earl
of Arundel. This is very much the style of Van
Dyke's other portraits in the very real looking face and clothing.
The Earl is seated and shown from chair level up,
(13:08):
and the natural look of the subject was a significant
departure from the portraits that were popular in England at
the time. Those tended to look a little more rigid
and very formal. They were filled with opulent details, and
they featured figures who looked just slightly surreal. These are
the traits associated with English mannerism. If you look up
English mannerism and then you look at a Van Dyke portrait,
(13:29):
you can see where he was like the odd man
out of what was going on at the time. This
was the very beginning of a shift in portraiture that
had begun with Rubens when he painted the work the
Countess of Arundel and her Retinue, and it really started
to crystallize with Van Dyke. England was ready for a
change in style, and the Baroque painters of Antwerp offered
something fresh and very appealing to the art collectors there.
(13:52):
So when he left England far sooner than he was
expected to. There was an understanding with the royal court
that he would return in roughly eight months to make
more paintings that didn't exactly happen.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Upon returning to Belgium, Van Dyke once again painted a
number of portraits there, and this time we do know
more about the sitters. A seated image of Nicholas Forcox,
the mayor of Antwerp, shows the subject seated adjacent to
a table on which the busts of Hercules and Zeus
are featured, as well as books by Plato and Seneca.
(14:26):
Once again, the realistic appearance of the face the natural
expression that had become trademarks of Van Dyke's work are
present so too in a set of seated portraits of
fellow painter Franz Senyders and his wife Margaretta de Vous.
In his portraits Susannah Foormont and her daughter of Clara
del Monte and Isabella Brandt, red and gold tones joined
(14:50):
his usual palette of more somber tones to add a
level of liveliness that's pretty striking. This is not the
first time that he used red and gold They appe
heard in the Racox portrait as well, but it's more
prominent in those pieces. In both of these paintings, the
subjects all have a look of sort of restrained humor
about them. Both of the women and the child depicted
(15:13):
look as though they are about to break into a smile. Yeah,
they're quite charming. I highly encourage anybody to look at them.
He also eventually became really well known for painting children,
and he's quite good at that kind of quizzical always
on the verge of a giggle expression. In October sixteen
twenty one, Van Dyke made his way to Italy, arriving
(15:35):
first in Genoa with introductions from Rubens. He had a
group of patrons essentially waiting for him there, so he
was able to make money right out of the gate,
and this was the start of a trip that led
to a great deal of artistic growth, partially because of
the timing being out of his period of apprenticeship, and
also because he was suddenly exposed to a very vibrant
(15:56):
art scene where a lot of different styles were in
play at the same time time, Plus, there was just
a lot of existing art in museums as well as
churches to study. This is also a period where Van
Dyke made several self portraits, at least one has been
determined to be a repaint over an unfinished commission. All
of them, if you just look at his self portraits,
(16:17):
show his growth as an artist and the fine shifts
in his technique that led to even greater mastery of
showing the subject as a living, a motive entity. He
became really well known for just kind of these natural
looking depictions. One thing that jumps out looking at these paintings, though,
is what a baby face he still was. He was
still in his very early twenties, and while he was
(16:39):
clearly a master of his work, he felt like he
still had plenty left to learn. Anthony van Dyke was
constantly on the go in Italy, and this period of
his life is hard to track in terms of when
he was ware. Genoa was sort of like a home
base that he would return to over and over, but
he was routinely making trips to other cities throughout his
(17:01):
time in Italy, and that he took advantage of the
available art there to continue his studies. He made sketches
of a lot of the works of Italian masters in
which he recorded his reactions to and feelings about them.
One interesting shift that took place in Van Dyke's Italian
travels is that his portraits started to be more frequently
(17:22):
full body portraits instead of busts or knees up. He
had painted some full body portraits before this, but those
were outliers. He also started posing his subjects a little
bit differently during this time. Often they're facing away from
the viewer, with their gaze elsewhere, unlike his earlier straight
on perspective. His sixteen twenty two portrait of Agostino Pallaviccini,
(17:45):
the Doge of Genoa, shows this transition starting. The Doge
is seated, but his entire body is in the portrait,
draped in a dramatic red robe with very wide sleeves
signifying his connection to the pope, and a white rough collar.
This portrait still features the straight on gaze of the
subject's eyes, but his face has turned about one quarter
(18:06):
to the viewer's left. The motivations for Van Dyke's choices
in travels in Italy remains a bit unclear. Some biographies
indicate he was plotting a course of self study and
visiting places like Rome and Venice to take in the
art there as part of his education. Others suggest that
he had commissions waiting almost everywhere and was just moving
(18:28):
around following the financial opportunities that were thick in Italy.
Could have even been both while in Rome. In sixteen
twenty two, Van Dyke painted George Gage with Two Men,
an unusual portrait in its composition of the main subject
occupying the left two thirds of the canvas, seated, but
(18:49):
not in what looks like a static pose. His head
is turned to the right of the frame and he
looks like he's mid sentence with the two men, who
were noted in the title. The two supporting figures are
rendered beautifully, of course, but with less detail and in
darker hues than Gage is. This painting was made when Gage,
who was an English diplomat, was in Rome.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Another project in sixteen twenty two was a set of
portraits of Sir Robert Shirley and his wife Teresa. These
are fascinating portraits because of the clothing involved. Terrisia was
a Circassian and a noble. The pair had met when Shirley,
an adventurer, was in Persia, and after that trip he
took to wearing Persian dress and he acted as an
(19:33):
ambassador for the Shaw and it is in that style
that Robert and Terrasia were painted. In the husband's portrait,
he is standing full length. He is wearing a large turban.
One hand is resting on his sash, and the other
holds a bow with a quiver dangling from a strap
that he has in his hand. Lady Shirley is in
a really unique sort of relaxed kneeling pose. She's resting
(19:58):
on her folded legs, and her dress is this sumptuous
gold and ivory with embellishment and other colors that are
kind of these fine little accents to it. And she
has a huge veil that billows out around her, and
it's topped with an ostrich plume. These portraits were meticulously planned.
There are surviving sketches for these, and their composition evolved
(20:19):
from the initial plan to the finished pieces.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
A couple of years into his Italy visit, Van Dyke
painted two paintings of the same man, Lucas van Uffled.
They're in some ways similar, with fun Uffull facing to
the right of the frame, even turned a little away
from the viewer, and he looks back over his right shoulder.
One looks as though he's settled in on his chair
and the other looks as though he's getting up or
(20:43):
bracing his hand on the arm of his chair to
hold his position. The face is really where the difference
is most apparent, though. In the seated image, in which
Vanuffel is backed by a large window, he looks placid,
almost bored or maybe questioning. In the second image, which
is in a darker interior before a desk, his expression
(21:04):
is harder to discern. His eyes are cut sharply to
his right to meet the viewer's gaze, and the look
on his face could be irritation or judgment, coupled with
what feels like the action of rising. The simple differences
and the second painting to the first make it feel
more dynamic. It's an interesting exercising comparison.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yeah, they look so similar in many ways, but there
are just these very small tweaks that they become completely different.
One of the later pieces, created during the years that
Van Dyke was in Italy offers an example of something
he would become well known for, and I reference this earlier.
That's his portraits of children. In a painting that features
three young brothers called the Balbi Children, he shows three
(21:47):
cherum faced boys, all of whom obviously look related, but
who each showed their own unique personality. These are obviously
children from an aristocratic family. Their clothes are pretty formal,
they look very luxurious, and each outfit is very different,
though they are all in shades of red, gold, gray,
and black.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
We noted that several of his clients in Italy were English,
and it's believed that some of them probably made invites
to try to get him back to London, but he
was not ready to go. Vandyke returned to Antwerp in
the summer of sixteen twenty seven and for the next
five years stayed very busy with portrait commissions There. He
eventually was appointed the court painter to arch Duchess Isabella.
(22:30):
One of his motivations for that return to Antwerp was
once again family issues. One of his sisters had died
and he once again brought a suit against his brothers
in law to regain the remainder of the family fortune.
To be clear, this was something he did not need.
He was financially very successful at this point. He lived
a very lavish life. You can find long descriptions of
(22:52):
how fancy his clothes were, but remember he came from
a big family and his siblings were going to lose
everything if he didn't intercede. We're about to talk about
what's often described as a cooling of the friendship between
Van Dyke and Rubens, although it's possible that that friendship
has been kind of misinterpreted over the centuries. We'll get
(23:12):
to it after we hear from the sponsors that keep
the show going. As Anthony reached his thirties, his relationship
with Rubens is described as having faltered, and the exact
cause for this cooling of their friendship is unknown. But
(23:35):
during the period that Van Dyke was in Antwerp following
his Italian trip, Rubens was often away. This is because,
in addition to being an artist, Rubens was also a diplomat,
and business dictated his frequent travels. It doesn't appear that
Rubens tried to stifle Van Dyke's career or anything that's
often something people theorize. Some of his clients did turn
(23:57):
to the younger artist when Rubens was unavailable for commissions,
but that doesn't seem to have been an issue. There
are plenty of other speculations about why these two men
fell out, and it seems like anyone who has studied
their work and their relationship has a different idea of
what happened. Popular theories include that Rubens became jealous of
(24:19):
his student, the possibility that Rubens sabotaged Van Dyke's career
by steering him to portraitures often written about at the time,
portraits were considered a commercial form of art, not like
art art, and Rubens did often pass portrait requests on
to his students while he focused on the more highly
(24:40):
regarded religious, historical, and allegorical areas of art. And some
of this confusion, once again pointed out by Christopher White,
who we referenced earlier, is because historians may have had
a very mischaracterized picture of the relationship between Rubens and
Van Dyke. For all these years, it's always been believed
(25:00):
that the two men were very close, but it's entirely
possible that theirs was really more of a business relationship.
Their lives were just so markedly different. While Van Dyke
was focused solely on art his entire life, Rubens, as
we just said, was also a diplomat. The older artist
also had a wife and children, whereas Van Dyke didn't
(25:21):
marry until near the end of his life. So it's
possible that, based on things like the writings of Belori
that we mentioned earlier, everyone just had this completely wrong
take on the situation, and what's been perceived as a
rift may have just been a natural drift apart. But
it also may have been a matter of insightful recognition
of business viability. Antwerp's art patrons may not have been
(25:44):
numerous enough to fully support to artists with similar styles,
so both men traveled to expand their markets rather than
staying together all the time. Starting in the sixteen thirties,
Vandyke produced a series of works that were one color,
using chalk or oil to make simple portraits intended for engraving.
These were part of the project he undertook with printer
(26:07):
and art dealer Martin van den Ninden, and the collection
titled Iconography, didn't get published until after Van Dyke's death
in sixteen thirty two, eleven years after he had left Anthony,
van Dyke finally returned to England and he was once
again greeted warmly by the royal court. King Charles the
First was in power at that point, and he made
(26:29):
the Flemish artist the monarchy's principal painter in ordinary with
a salary of two hundred pounds per year. Van Dyke
became friendly with the royal family and he made a
lot of portraits of King Charles, Queen Henrietta Maria and
their children, and some of these were used to really
humanize the king in the face of growing unrest in
the country, so he was kind of a propaganda painter
(26:50):
in some ways. During the early part of his time
back in London, Vandyke painted one of his most famous
self portraits, which was self portrait with a Sunflower. This
image shows him facing away from the viewer at a
three quarter angle, with his head turned back over his
right shoulder. In front of him, there's a sunflower which
he appears to be pointing at while fixing his guys
(27:12):
squarely on the viewer. His hair is longer and darker
than in his earlier portraits, and he has a mustache
and a goateee. It's no longer the chairub of his
earlier self portrait work. His outfit seen from the shoulders up,
is of kind of a salmony pink color, and he
plays with a gold chain that straped over his shoulder.
(27:32):
This is an important work in the private collection of
the Duke of Westminster.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
It is not on public display because if it was,
I would get a plane ticket today. I love this painting.
While he stayed longer than he did on his first
trip when he was visiting King James's court, he did
return to Antwerp again for a year, starting in sixteen
thirty four, once again to handle family business. He was
(27:57):
also named Honorary Dean of the Antwerp of Artists during
this brief stay in his home country. But he was
back in England in sixteen thirty five and he moved
into the neighborhood of Blackfriars. He spent summers in Eltham
Palace and over the course of several years in London,
Van Dyke painted portraits of almost everyone in the nobility,
and many many more portraits of King Charles.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
The first Van Dyke's studio in London became a fast
paced whirlwind of creation. Like most masters, he had a
group of assistants and apprentices who helped him. When one
of his subjects came for a sitting, he would sketch
out the rough plan, something he increasingly did for portraits
as his career evolved, and then that sketch would be
(28:39):
enlarged onto canvas by an assistant. Van Dyke typically painted
the face, and then the accompanying elements of the canvas
would be completed again by his assistants, with varying degrees
of participation from Van Dyke himself. He would apply the
finishing touches.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, some of his assistants were doing like all of
the clothing, but he always did the face. His life
at the end of the sixteen thirties and beginning of
the sixteen forties could be described as unsettled because he
was once again often on the move, but he also
made the decision to settle down. In early sixteen forty,
Anthony married Mary Ruthven, who was Lady in waiting to
(29:16):
Queen Henrietta. This was something of a surprise to a
lot of people. Throughout his life, Van Dyke had many
relationships with women and often had more than one romance
going at a time as he traveled around Europe. He
was sort of infamously involved with a woman named Margaret
Lemon right up to the time he was married to Ruthven.
Stories of Margaret are all about how intense and jealous
(29:39):
she was, and some of the very graphic threats of
bodily harm that she issued should Anthony ever cheat on her.
She sort of vanishes into the historical record once the
painter left her for his marriage to Mary, though.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
This was by all accounts a happy marriage and soon
Mary was pregnant. But though this should have been a
time of joy, a shadow was cast when Van Dyke's mentor, Rubens,
died of heart failure in late May of sixteen forty.
A few months later, Van Dyke decided to return once
more to Antwerp to pay his respects, although this was
a brief visit. His final self portrait was created sometime
(30:17):
during this transitional period of his life. It's less colorful
than the others, certainly far less so than the Sunflower
self portrait, although he's posed at the same angle. This time.
He wears a black doublet with white slashing. The background
is a simple, warm brown, and his curly hair and
facial hair are once again included. He looks quite handsome
(30:40):
and his facial expression is mostly neutral, although his eyes
once again seemed to peer out at the viewer, almost
as if asking a question.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
This was all happening at the same time that word
spread that King Louis the thirteenth of France needed a
decorator for the galleries of the Louver. Van Dyke heard
about this opportunity. He returned to London after his trip
to Antwerp, and he immediately turned and headed to Paris
to try to get an audience with the king because
he wanted to lobby for this commission. But though he
(31:10):
made it there, he did not get the job. That
commission went to French painters Nicholas Poussin and Simon Vouis.
At this point, the forty two year old Van Dyke
was not well. His health had been in decline in
this frantic pace of his life, including going back to
Antwerp and France once again. Before returning to England had
taken a toll. He had developed a tremor in his
(31:32):
right hand that was bad enough that he couldn't sign
his name naturally. He was concerned about this, and he
said to have visited a number of physicians in the
hope of finding a cure, but nothing came of it.
King Charles the First was deeply concerned for his painter
and friends, so much so that he offered three hundred
pounds as a reward for anyone who could help. The
(31:54):
King's own physician attended to Van Dyke, but he was
unable to cure him or improve his condition. Van Dyke's
daughter with Mary, named Justiniana, was born on December first,
sixteen forty one. Anthony was at the birth. The baby
was baptized a little over a week later on December ninth,
and just hours after that, Van Dyke died at his
home in Blackfriars. In between Justiniana's birth and her baptism,
(32:20):
Knowing clearly how serious his health crisis was, Van Dyke
had made his will, and that will actually contained a surprise.
Justiniana was not his first child. He had been hiding
another daughter born to one of his mistresses, all the
way back in sixteen twenty two when he was in
his early career in Antwerp, and his sister Susannah had
(32:41):
raised that girl, named Maria Theresa, who was just shy
of twenty when he died, and he provided for her
in his will. Vandyke was buried in England in Old
Saint Paul's Cathedral. The king ordered a monument to be
erected over the final resting place, although what was inscribed
on it is reported differently by various sources. We cannot
(33:03):
verify which is correct because this monument burned in the
Great Fire in sixteen sixty six. Van Dyke's collection of
print portraits Iconography published four years after his death in
sixteen forty five, and that has become sort of a
visual directory of many of Antwerp's most prominent citizens during
Van Dyke's career. For example, there are two portraits of
(33:25):
Peter Breugel, the younger in that group, that are particularly striking.
Van Dyke's legacy really cannot be overstated. His work truly
changed portraiture in England, and a lot of artists who
came after him, including Thomas Gainsborough, a painter of the
famous Blue Boy portrait, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who helped
found the Royal Academy of Arts. I'll cite him as
(33:46):
a primary influence, as has no doubt been evident throughout
this episode. There are huge gaps in the record of
Van Dyke's life, and some of this may have been purposeful,
because it's possible that a man with the kinds of
secrets he would only divulge, for example, in his will,
might not have wanted to account for his various visits
to places he traveled as anything more than I just
(34:08):
have business there. But some of it is also just
that records were lacking. A lot of records burned and
people just didn't track every little thing. And the interesting
result of all of this in Van Dyke's case is
that we don't know how many paintings he made. There
are estimates, but those vary from two hundred to five
hundred pieces. And because he was so influential, a lot
(34:31):
of artists that followed took great pains to try to
capture his style in their work. He also had a
lot of assistance, so this all has led to some
uncertain attributions over the years. Some have eventually been attributed
to the assistance of his workshop, but there are a
lot of others that still have question marks. As recently
as twenty nineteen, there was a new identification made when
(34:53):
just such a work, portrait of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia,
was identified as an original Van Dyke.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Oh you're so happy talking about art, I am. I
love it and I really love his im I will
talk about it some in the behind the scenes, like
the way I plagued some of my friends by sending
them photographs of Van Dyke work and like, could you
believe this was penty four hundred years ago?
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I just mind boggling. I do have some listener mail
which comes from our listener Caitlin, and it is about
planners and specifically Planners and ADHD. Caitlyn writes, Hi, Holly
and Tracy, and Happy New Year. Listening to the New
Year's Day episode on planners and Almanacs, as well as
the behind the scenes, brought back a visceral memory of
being an elementary school and having the teacher distribute planners
(35:46):
to each student. They were August to June to align
with the school year, and every month there were little
quotes and fun facts, as well as so many holidays.
Every day when we were given homework, our teacher would
ask us to pull out our planners and write down
the details concerts, field trips, any other reason a nine
year old might need to know a date into the planner.
(36:06):
I inevitably would lose my planner several times a semester,
or fished out crumpled and unmarked from the bottom of
my backpack when challenged. Because I usually did my homework
in class after my other work, missing technical deadlines was
no big deal. Fast forward to age twenty three, and
it turned out I have ADHD. All of my efforts
and attempts at systems and bullet journals and calendars had
(36:28):
been thwarted, not by innate laziness or it not being
for me, but by brainworms. A few years out, I'm
on ADHD meds and my color coded dry erase calendar
lives with my fridge and is strictly up to date. Mostly.
Hope y'all are well, and I've attached some shark to
post photos as pet text. She was recently put on
a diet after being certified chonky at the VET, and
(36:51):
she hates it a lot. Yeah, I've had a cat
on a diet. He no like it one bit. She
also asks about accessibility when we plan our trips. The
answer is yes, but also it becomes difficult to gauge
accessibility when we're planning international trips sometimes, but we do
always consider it. It doesn't always work out, obviously, it's
kind of tricky on international travel. But I hope nobody
(37:13):
thinks that we're just ignoring that this cat is very cute.
She looks like a dilutey calico. It's hard to tell
case she's in shadow. She may be full of calico,
but the cutest thing on the planet. Listen, I love
a chunky cat.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
I also really like this email because while we talked
about planners and how some people love planners, we didn't
really talk about how planners can be very flum mixing
for people sometimes when they don't even really realize why.
And I think it's valid to discuss that, Like, there
are some people that just look at a planner and
it looks like torture. So while I love them because I,
(37:49):
you know, have a little bit of attention issues myself.
For me, that's like the good tool, but I understand
that doesn't work for everybody.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Anyway. I hope, whether you're a planner person or not,
that you're having a great start to the new year.
I suppose you could write us if you would wish
and share your experiences and maybe you're kiddies or puppies
or snakes or translats or whatever pets you have and enjoy.
I would love it if someone would send us.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Some some Corvid pictures. Anybody got a pet raven send
them along. You can do that at History podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
We're also on social media as Missed in History, and
you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app
and anywhere else you get your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So we haven't had an
art episode in a minute, so I was having a
jones about it. Yeah, when I first read this outline
and it said that, I was like, haven't we And
then I went, oh, no, we really haven't. I always
feel guilty because I'll sometimes do a couple clumped together
and then I'm like, I shouldn't only talk about artists,
(00:35):
and then I will shy away from them for a
little while. But it's been on minutes, so I feel
okay about it. So today we are going to talk
about Anthony van Dyck, and right out of the gate,
I feel like we have to talk about his name
because you'll see it written a million different ways. There
is a reason for that, and also pronounced right slightly differently.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I feel like I looked at him million videos of
like art curators and art historians, and they all kind
of default to the anglicized Anthony van Dyke. But you'll
see like van Dyke written with a J in it
or with a W in it in a very Italian style,
(01:21):
where it's Antonio written Italian style spelling, and then Van
Dyke is one word run together with no differential of
capital letters to separate Van and Dyke. It's like one
big thing, even Van Dyke with a B, etc. There
are a lot of different ways, and the reason is
he moved around a lot, and he didn't seem especially
(01:42):
hung up on there's one correct way to do my name.
Even when he got accolades in various countries, he would
be like, no, just do it this way, which I
find really really interesting about him. I also feel like
we should mention we'll talk about the names of his
paintings in this but these are names that the most
part were attributed well after he made them, and sometimes
(02:03):
they're just a way that various art historians have identified
the painting, usually by the contents of the painting. He
wasn't out there, to the best of our knowledge, giving
them any kind of naming convention that we're not privy to.
I really really like his work, and so he's been
on my list for a long time. I think he's
(02:24):
a genius and I love him, and I also just
think he's an interesting guy because he seems kind of
relaxed in some ways, and he's tied to a lot
of interesting things in art history, so that's what you
get today.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
We'll start, of course, at the beginning. Anthony van Dyke
was born on March twenty second, fifteen ninety nine, in Antwerp.
At the time, Antwerp was part of the Spanish Netherlands.
His father, Franz, was a successful silk merchant, and his mother,
Maria Kuiper's, was Franz's second wife. There were a dozen
children in this family. Anthony was the seventh of them.
(03:01):
The family lived on Growth Market, which is Antwerp's central square,
until they moved to a bigger house in sixteen oh seven.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
But just a few weeks after they made that move
to their bigger house, his mother Maria died, and from
that moment that privileged, comfortable life that the Van Dykes
had enjoyed kind of began to unravel. Franz, his father,
did not remarry, though he did have other relationships, and
it seems as though without a mother to care for
them full time, the kids were left largely to their
(03:32):
own devices. Simultaneously, Franz started to really struggle with the
business side of his life as well as his personal life.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
When Anthony was ten, he started to formally study painting
under Hendrik von Balin at the Antwerp Artist Guild. He
didn't stay with Van Balen for very long, though, and
it's not clear when their teaching arrangement ended. The oldest
surviving Van Dyke painting was made when the artist was
only four team in sixteen thirteen. This is sometimes called
(04:03):
portrait of a man, or the slightly more descriptive portrait
of an old man, sometimes portrait of an unknown seventy
year old man. This is a bust up rendering of
a man in a stiff Elizabethan style rough collar. He
has a robust white mustache and appointed goateee. Today this
(04:24):
is part of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of
Belgium's collection, and it serves as an early example of
the way Van Dyke's career trajectory always seemed to be
destined for portraits, although that was not the only style
of painting he was interested in.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
At the age of fifteen or possibly sixteen, Anthony painted
a self portrait. This is once again a bust and
head image, with the artist seen from the side and
his head is turned to face the viewer. It is
overall a dark composition. He has reddish, curly hair, his
face is very pale and tinged pink, and his reddish
(05:01):
lips foremost very sharp contrast to the background. In his clothes,
there's also a line of white that peeks out above
his collar. It's his undershirt, but that line of white
creates this sort of diagonal bisecting of the overall piece.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
At this point, Van Dyke appears to have left the
tutelage of Van Balen and was working as an independent artist.
But that's odd. Per the guild rules of Antwerp, he
should not have been able to establish himself as a
professional artist before being granted membership in that guild. He
was too young to do that at this point. He
(05:40):
didn't become a member of the guild until sixteen eighteen.
That is also the year that Van Dyke began to
study under Peter Paul Rubens, and at this time Rubens
was forty one and he had gained a reputation as
one of Antwerp's best artists. This association would link the
two men forever Historically, in sixteen seventy two, Giovanni Pietro
(06:00):
Bellori published the work Levite di petori sculptori at architeti
Moderni Those are the Lives of the modern painters, sculptors
and Architects, And in this work he described the two
men meeting in a rather romanticized way, saying that Van
Dyke just sort of showed up at Peter Paul Rubin's
school as a quote young man possessed of such noble
(06:22):
generosity of manners and so fine a talent for painting
that then it goes on to say that, of course
Rubens recognized that having this young man as a student
was going to bring honor to his school. But that's
really a speculative take on this meeting. We don't know
much at all in the way of specifics about the
earliest associations of these two men. Art historian Christopher White's
(06:46):
twenty twenty one biography of Van dyke speculates that although
Rubens and Van Dyke were very different personalities, Rubens may
have recognized some similarities in their backgrounds and their turbulent
family lives, and that may have been part of him
deciding to become a mentor. We truly don't.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Know, though, but Van Dyke, we do know, became not
only a student of Rubens but also an assistant, giving
up his independent career status to do so, and at
some point he started living with Rubens, although the exact
date that happened is unknown, He's mentioned as being there
and working on pieces with the master in letters and
notes of various people in sixteen twenty. We're going to
(07:29):
talk more about the nature of their friendship and relationship
in a bit, but this living situation, to be clear,
was not indicative of anything in particular other than that
Van Dyke was working closely with the senior artist. It
would not have been.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Uncommon for an assistant to do so and move in.
In the early years of his professional career, Van Dyke
painted a lot of portraits of Belgian aristocracy. Most of
these portraits are from the bust up, although some go
down to the knees. The poses all tend to be
pretty similar, with the subject holding some kind of accessory.
(08:02):
It quickly became apparent that he was incredibly skilled in
painting fabrics. Sometime in sixteen eighteen or sixteen nineteen he
painted portrait of a man drawing on his glove and
a married couple, both of them echo paintings by sixteenth
century Flemish artists.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, there have been some really interesting studies that modern
historians have done where they have found very similarly posed
paintings of other people that previous artists had done. So
Van Dyke was clearly like using his knowledge and his
study of art to inform the way he was working.
He was not only working in portraiture, though he also
(08:40):
painted historical subjects. He also created works that blended historical
figures or thebes with imagery of contemporary models. That's a
practice that was very popular at the time. And within
these works, his depictions of the people in the paintings
are always just incredibly detailed, like many portraits within the
Greater World work. So when we're talking about this, we're
(09:01):
saying like he would paint, you know, some important historical
or biblical scene, and people that were contemporaries of him
would be cast in roles in those pieces. An interesting
note is that he usually sketched out his religious and
historical paintings before actually putting brush to canvas, but he
did not usually do the same for portraits.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
One of the interesting and also frustrating aspects of all
this early work is that while we know that most
of his works were commissions from the nobility of Antwerp,
we don't know who a lot of the people in
the paintings are. There's not a lot of notation or
surviving record keeping regarding these works. In some cases, art
(09:43):
historians have made sort of best guesses by piecing together
information that survived, but these it's just that it's educated guesses.
One that we do know is a portrait of Cornelius
Vandergeese that serves as a perfect example of how very
skill Van Dyke was even at an early age. The portrait,
(10:03):
which is almost a close up of the subject's face,
was created in sixteen nineteen or sixteen twenty, and the
eyes in particular are rendered with such skill that they
look almost like a photograph. Around the same time that
he painted it, in the summer of sixteen twenty, there's
mention of Van Dyke in a letter from Amsterdam to
the Duke of Arundel in London, praising him as being
(10:27):
almost as admired as Rubens, but lamenting that he seems
reluctant to leave Antwerp.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yeah, London was very eager to try to get Van
Dyke to come and visit, and I will say that
painting that Tracy just described of Cornelius vander Geeste is
one of my very favorites. It is so striking and beautiful.
At the age of eighteen, Van Dyke undertook a work
that had nothing to do with his art. He filed
a lawsuit against his family. This is tied to his
(10:58):
father's personal struggle, and one of those struggles involved a
woman that he had been involved with who began to
very publicly argue with him and accuse him of wrongdoing. Basically,
she was in the street kind of yelling accusations. In
terms of available information, it's unclear what specifically those accusations were.
But because of all of this turmoil and like the
(11:20):
public embarrassment going on, Van Dyke's brothers in law filed
a motion with the court to be given control of
Franz van Dyke's finances because he was not doing a
good job of looking after the family's interests. Anthony filed
his own papers asking for the court to name a
separate appointee to handle Franz's money, as he did not
(11:40):
trust his brothers in law with it. Even though he
did recognize that his father really couldn't handle things. At
that point, the brothers in law did get control and
Anthony had to go to court again to get the
money that he and his younger siblings were owed by
those brothers in law, and it would appear that this
family situation went from strained to fairly terrible, at least
with his relations by marriage. Coming up, we'll talk about
(12:04):
Van Dyke's first trip to England, but first we will
have a sponsor break. In November sixteen twenty Van Dyke
traveled to England for the first time, and it's believed
that he was persuaded to do so by one or
(12:25):
more art collectors there. As I mentioned earlier, they were
eager to get him to England. There he was commissioned
as a painter by King James the First, reportedly at
a rate of one hundred pounds per year, but he
didn't stay an entire year. He didn't stay even half
a year. He left after four months in February of
sixteen twenty one. He only painted a few works during
(12:47):
his time in London, including a historical portrait of the
Duke and Duchess of Buckingham as Venus and Adonis, another
and perhaps more important was a portrait of the Earl
of Arundel. This is very much the style of Van
Dyke's other portraits in the very real looking face and clothing.
The Earl is seated and shown from chair level up,
(13:08):
and the natural look of the subject was a significant
departure from the portraits that were popular in England at
the time. Those tended to look a little more rigid
and very formal. They were filled with opulent details, and
they featured figures who looked just slightly surreal. These are
the traits associated with English mannerism. If you look up
English mannerism and then you look at a Van Dyke portrait,
(13:29):
you can see where he was like the odd man
out of what was going on at the time. This
was the very beginning of a shift in portraiture that
had begun with Rubens when he painted the work the
Countess of Arundel and her Retinue, and it really started
to crystallize with Van Dyke. England was ready for a
change in style, and the Baroque painters of Antwerp offered
something fresh and very appealing to the art collectors there.
(13:52):
So when he left England far sooner than he was
expected to. There was an understanding with the royal court
that he would return in roughly eight months to make
more paintings that didn't exactly happen.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Upon returning to Belgium, Van Dyke once again painted a
number of portraits there, and this time we do know
more about the sitters. A seated image of Nicholas Forcox,
the mayor of Antwerp, shows the subject seated adjacent to
a table on which the busts of Hercules and Zeus
are featured, as well as books by Plato and Seneca.
(14:26):
Once again, the realistic appearance of the face the natural
expression that had become trademarks of Van Dyke's work are
present so too in a set of seated portraits of
fellow painter Franz Senyders and his wife Margaretta de Vous.
In his portraits Susannah Foormont and her daughter of Clara
del Monte and Isabella Brandt, red and gold tones joined
(14:50):
his usual palette of more somber tones to add a
level of liveliness that's pretty striking. This is not the
first time that he used red and gold They appe
heard in the Racox portrait as well, but it's more
prominent in those pieces. In both of these paintings, the
subjects all have a look of sort of restrained humor
about them. Both of the women and the child depicted
(15:13):
look as though they are about to break into a smile. Yeah,
they're quite charming. I highly encourage anybody to look at them.
He also eventually became really well known for painting children,
and he's quite good at that kind of quizzical always
on the verge of a giggle expression. In October sixteen
twenty one, Van Dyke made his way to Italy, arriving
(15:35):
first in Genoa with introductions from Rubens. He had a
group of patrons essentially waiting for him there, so he
was able to make money right out of the gate,
and this was the start of a trip that led
to a great deal of artistic growth, partially because of
the timing being out of his period of apprenticeship, and
also because he was suddenly exposed to a very vibrant
(15:56):
art scene where a lot of different styles were in
play at the same time time, Plus, there was just
a lot of existing art in museums as well as
churches to study. This is also a period where Van
Dyke made several self portraits, at least one has been
determined to be a repaint over an unfinished commission. All
of them, if you just look at his self portraits,
(16:17):
show his growth as an artist and the fine shifts
in his technique that led to even greater mastery of
showing the subject as a living, a motive entity. He
became really well known for just kind of these natural
looking depictions. One thing that jumps out looking at these paintings, though,
is what a baby face he still was. He was
still in his very early twenties, and while he was
(16:39):
clearly a master of his work, he felt like he
still had plenty left to learn. Anthony van Dyke was
constantly on the go in Italy, and this period of
his life is hard to track in terms of when
he was ware. Genoa was sort of like a home
base that he would return to over and over, but
he was routinely making trips to other cities throughout his
(17:01):
time in Italy, and that he took advantage of the
available art there to continue his studies. He made sketches
of a lot of the works of Italian masters in
which he recorded his reactions to and feelings about them.
One interesting shift that took place in Van Dyke's Italian
travels is that his portraits started to be more frequently
(17:22):
full body portraits instead of busts or knees up. He
had painted some full body portraits before this, but those
were outliers. He also started posing his subjects a little
bit differently during this time. Often they're facing away from
the viewer, with their gaze elsewhere, unlike his earlier straight
on perspective. His sixteen twenty two portrait of Agostino Pallaviccini,
(17:45):
the Doge of Genoa, shows this transition starting. The Doge
is seated, but his entire body is in the portrait,
draped in a dramatic red robe with very wide sleeves
signifying his connection to the pope, and a white rough collar.
This portrait still features the straight on gaze of the
subject's eyes, but his face has turned about one quarter
(18:06):
to the viewer's left. The motivations for Van Dyke's choices
in travels in Italy remains a bit unclear. Some biographies
indicate he was plotting a course of self study and
visiting places like Rome and Venice to take in the
art there as part of his education. Others suggest that
he had commissions waiting almost everywhere and was just moving
(18:28):
around following the financial opportunities that were thick in Italy.
Could have even been both while in Rome. In sixteen
twenty two, Van Dyke painted George Gage with Two Men,
an unusual portrait in its composition of the main subject
occupying the left two thirds of the canvas, seated, but
(18:49):
not in what looks like a static pose. His head
is turned to the right of the frame and he
looks like he's mid sentence with the two men, who
were noted in the title. The two supporting figures are
rendered beautifully, of course, but with less detail and in
darker hues than Gage is. This painting was made when Gage,
who was an English diplomat, was in Rome.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Another project in sixteen twenty two was a set of
portraits of Sir Robert Shirley and his wife Teresa. These
are fascinating portraits because of the clothing involved. Terrisia was
a Circassian and a noble. The pair had met when Shirley,
an adventurer, was in Persia, and after that trip he
took to wearing Persian dress and he acted as an
(19:33):
ambassador for the Shaw and it is in that style
that Robert and Terrasia were painted. In the husband's portrait,
he is standing full length. He is wearing a large turban.
One hand is resting on his sash, and the other
holds a bow with a quiver dangling from a strap
that he has in his hand. Lady Shirley is in
a really unique sort of relaxed kneeling pose. She's resting
(19:58):
on her folded legs, and her dress is this sumptuous
gold and ivory with embellishment and other colors that are
kind of these fine little accents to it. And she
has a huge veil that billows out around her, and
it's topped with an ostrich plume. These portraits were meticulously planned.
There are surviving sketches for these, and their composition evolved
(20:19):
from the initial plan to the finished pieces.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
A couple of years into his Italy visit, Van Dyke
painted two paintings of the same man, Lucas van Uffled.
They're in some ways similar, with fun Uffull facing to
the right of the frame, even turned a little away
from the viewer, and he looks back over his right shoulder.
One looks as though he's settled in on his chair
and the other looks as though he's getting up or
(20:43):
bracing his hand on the arm of his chair to
hold his position. The face is really where the difference
is most apparent, though. In the seated image, in which
Vanuffel is backed by a large window, he looks placid,
almost bored or maybe questioning. In the second image, which
is in a darker interior before a desk, his expression
(21:04):
is harder to discern. His eyes are cut sharply to
his right to meet the viewer's gaze, and the look
on his face could be irritation or judgment, coupled with
what feels like the action of rising. The simple differences
and the second painting to the first make it feel
more dynamic. It's an interesting exercising comparison.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yeah, they look so similar in many ways, but there
are just these very small tweaks that they become completely different.
One of the later pieces, created during the years that
Van Dyke was in Italy offers an example of something
he would become well known for, and I reference this earlier.
That's his portraits of children. In a painting that features
three young brothers called the Balbi Children, he shows three
(21:47):
cherum faced boys, all of whom obviously look related, but
who each showed their own unique personality. These are obviously
children from an aristocratic family. Their clothes are pretty formal,
they look very luxurious, and each outfit is very different,
though they are all in shades of red, gold, gray,
and black.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
We noted that several of his clients in Italy were English,
and it's believed that some of them probably made invites
to try to get him back to London, but he
was not ready to go. Vandyke returned to Antwerp in
the summer of sixteen twenty seven and for the next
five years stayed very busy with portrait commissions There. He
eventually was appointed the court painter to arch Duchess Isabella.
(22:30):
One of his motivations for that return to Antwerp was
once again family issues. One of his sisters had died
and he once again brought a suit against his brothers
in law to regain the remainder of the family fortune.
To be clear, this was something he did not need.
He was financially very successful at this point. He lived
a very lavish life. You can find long descriptions of
(22:52):
how fancy his clothes were, but remember he came from
a big family and his siblings were going to lose
everything if he didn't intercede. We're about to talk about
what's often described as a cooling of the friendship between
Van Dyke and Rubens, although it's possible that that friendship
has been kind of misinterpreted over the centuries. We'll get
(23:12):
to it after we hear from the sponsors that keep
the show going. As Anthony reached his thirties, his relationship
with Rubens is described as having faltered, and the exact
cause for this cooling of their friendship is unknown. But
(23:35):
during the period that Van Dyke was in Antwerp following
his Italian trip, Rubens was often away. This is because,
in addition to being an artist, Rubens was also a diplomat,
and business dictated his frequent travels. It doesn't appear that
Rubens tried to stifle Van Dyke's career or anything that's
often something people theorize. Some of his clients did turn
(23:57):
to the younger artist when Rubens was unavailable for commissions,
but that doesn't seem to have been an issue. There
are plenty of other speculations about why these two men
fell out, and it seems like anyone who has studied
their work and their relationship has a different idea of
what happened. Popular theories include that Rubens became jealous of
(24:19):
his student, the possibility that Rubens sabotaged Van Dyke's career
by steering him to portraitures often written about at the time,
portraits were considered a commercial form of art, not like
art art, and Rubens did often pass portrait requests on
to his students while he focused on the more highly
(24:40):
regarded religious, historical, and allegorical areas of art. And some
of this confusion, once again pointed out by Christopher White,
who we referenced earlier, is because historians may have had
a very mischaracterized picture of the relationship between Rubens and
Van Dyke. For all these years, it's always been believed
(25:00):
that the two men were very close, but it's entirely
possible that theirs was really more of a business relationship.
Their lives were just so markedly different. While Van Dyke
was focused solely on art his entire life, Rubens, as
we just said, was also a diplomat. The older artist
also had a wife and children, whereas Van Dyke didn't
(25:21):
marry until near the end of his life. So it's
possible that, based on things like the writings of Belori
that we mentioned earlier, everyone just had this completely wrong
take on the situation, and what's been perceived as a
rift may have just been a natural drift apart. But
it also may have been a matter of insightful recognition
of business viability. Antwerp's art patrons may not have been
(25:44):
numerous enough to fully support to artists with similar styles,
so both men traveled to expand their markets rather than
staying together all the time. Starting in the sixteen thirties,
Vandyke produced a series of works that were one color,
using chalk or oil to make simple portraits intended for engraving.
These were part of the project he undertook with printer
(26:07):
and art dealer Martin van den Ninden, and the collection
titled Iconography, didn't get published until after Van Dyke's death
in sixteen thirty two, eleven years after he had left Anthony,
van Dyke finally returned to England and he was once
again greeted warmly by the royal court. King Charles the
First was in power at that point, and he made
(26:29):
the Flemish artist the monarchy's principal painter in ordinary with
a salary of two hundred pounds per year. Van Dyke
became friendly with the royal family and he made a
lot of portraits of King Charles, Queen Henrietta Maria and
their children, and some of these were used to really
humanize the king in the face of growing unrest in
the country, so he was kind of a propaganda painter
(26:50):
in some ways. During the early part of his time
back in London, Vandyke painted one of his most famous
self portraits, which was self portrait with a Sunflower. This
image shows him facing away from the viewer at a
three quarter angle, with his head turned back over his
right shoulder. In front of him, there's a sunflower which
he appears to be pointing at while fixing his guys
(27:12):
squarely on the viewer. His hair is longer and darker
than in his earlier portraits, and he has a mustache
and a goateee. It's no longer the chairub of his
earlier self portrait work. His outfit seen from the shoulders up,
is of kind of a salmony pink color, and he
plays with a gold chain that straped over his shoulder.
(27:32):
This is an important work in the private collection of
the Duke of Westminster.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
It is not on public display because if it was,
I would get a plane ticket today. I love this painting.
While he stayed longer than he did on his first
trip when he was visiting King James's court, he did
return to Antwerp again for a year, starting in sixteen
thirty four, once again to handle family business. He was
(27:57):
also named Honorary Dean of the Antwerp of Artists during
this brief stay in his home country. But he was
back in England in sixteen thirty five and he moved
into the neighborhood of Blackfriars. He spent summers in Eltham
Palace and over the course of several years in London,
Van Dyke painted portraits of almost everyone in the nobility,
and many many more portraits of King Charles.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
The first Van Dyke's studio in London became a fast
paced whirlwind of creation. Like most masters, he had a
group of assistants and apprentices who helped him. When one
of his subjects came for a sitting, he would sketch
out the rough plan, something he increasingly did for portraits
as his career evolved, and then that sketch would be
(28:39):
enlarged onto canvas by an assistant. Van Dyke typically painted
the face, and then the accompanying elements of the canvas
would be completed again by his assistants, with varying degrees
of participation from Van Dyke himself. He would apply the
finishing touches.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, some of his assistants were doing like all of
the clothing, but he always did the face. His life
at the end of the sixteen thirties and beginning of
the sixteen forties could be described as unsettled because he
was once again often on the move, but he also
made the decision to settle down. In early sixteen forty,
Anthony married Mary Ruthven, who was Lady in waiting to
(29:16):
Queen Henrietta. This was something of a surprise to a
lot of people. Throughout his life, Van Dyke had many
relationships with women and often had more than one romance
going at a time as he traveled around Europe. He
was sort of infamously involved with a woman named Margaret
Lemon right up to the time he was married to Ruthven.
Stories of Margaret are all about how intense and jealous
(29:39):
she was, and some of the very graphic threats of
bodily harm that she issued should Anthony ever cheat on her.
She sort of vanishes into the historical record once the
painter left her for his marriage to Mary, though.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
This was by all accounts a happy marriage and soon
Mary was pregnant. But though this should have been a
time of joy, a shadow was cast when Van Dyke's mentor, Rubens,
died of heart failure in late May of sixteen forty.
A few months later, Van Dyke decided to return once
more to Antwerp to pay his respects, although this was
a brief visit. His final self portrait was created sometime
(30:17):
during this transitional period of his life. It's less colorful
than the others, certainly far less so than the Sunflower
self portrait, although he's posed at the same angle. This time.
He wears a black doublet with white slashing. The background
is a simple, warm brown, and his curly hair and
facial hair are once again included. He looks quite handsome
(30:40):
and his facial expression is mostly neutral, although his eyes
once again seemed to peer out at the viewer, almost
as if asking a question.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
This was all happening at the same time that word
spread that King Louis the thirteenth of France needed a
decorator for the galleries of the Louver. Van Dyke heard
about this opportunity. He returned to London after his trip
to Antwerp, and he immediately turned and headed to Paris
to try to get an audience with the king because
he wanted to lobby for this commission. But though he
(31:10):
made it there, he did not get the job. That
commission went to French painters Nicholas Poussin and Simon Vouis.
At this point, the forty two year old Van Dyke
was not well. His health had been in decline in
this frantic pace of his life, including going back to
Antwerp and France once again. Before returning to England had
taken a toll. He had developed a tremor in his
(31:32):
right hand that was bad enough that he couldn't sign
his name naturally. He was concerned about this, and he
said to have visited a number of physicians in the
hope of finding a cure, but nothing came of it.
King Charles the First was deeply concerned for his painter
and friends, so much so that he offered three hundred
pounds as a reward for anyone who could help. The
(31:54):
King's own physician attended to Van Dyke, but he was
unable to cure him or improve his condition. Van Dyke's
daughter with Mary, named Justiniana, was born on December first,
sixteen forty one. Anthony was at the birth. The baby
was baptized a little over a week later on December ninth,
and just hours after that, Van Dyke died at his
home in Blackfriars. In between Justiniana's birth and her baptism,
(32:20):
Knowing clearly how serious his health crisis was, Van Dyke
had made his will, and that will actually contained a surprise.
Justiniana was not his first child. He had been hiding
another daughter born to one of his mistresses, all the
way back in sixteen twenty two when he was in
his early career in Antwerp, and his sister Susannah had
(32:41):
raised that girl, named Maria Theresa, who was just shy
of twenty when he died, and he provided for her
in his will. Vandyke was buried in England in Old
Saint Paul's Cathedral. The king ordered a monument to be
erected over the final resting place, although what was inscribed
on it is reported differently by various sources. We cannot
(33:03):
verify which is correct because this monument burned in the
Great Fire in sixteen sixty six. Van Dyke's collection of
print portraits Iconography published four years after his death in
sixteen forty five, and that has become sort of a
visual directory of many of Antwerp's most prominent citizens during
Van Dyke's career. For example, there are two portraits of
(33:25):
Peter Breugel, the younger in that group, that are particularly striking.
Van Dyke's legacy really cannot be overstated. His work truly
changed portraiture in England, and a lot of artists who
came after him, including Thomas Gainsborough, a painter of the
famous Blue Boy portrait, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who helped
found the Royal Academy of Arts. I'll cite him as
(33:46):
a primary influence, as has no doubt been evident throughout
this episode. There are huge gaps in the record of
Van Dyke's life, and some of this may have been purposeful,
because it's possible that a man with the kinds of
secrets he would only divulge, for example, in his will,
might not have wanted to account for his various visits
to places he traveled as anything more than I just
(34:08):
have business there. But some of it is also just
that records were lacking. A lot of records burned and
people just didn't track every little thing. And the interesting
result of all of this in Van Dyke's case is
that we don't know how many paintings he made. There
are estimates, but those vary from two hundred to five
hundred pieces. And because he was so influential, a lot
(34:31):
of artists that followed took great pains to try to
capture his style in their work. He also had a
lot of assistance, so this all has led to some
uncertain attributions over the years. Some have eventually been attributed
to the assistance of his workshop, but there are a
lot of others that still have question marks. As recently
as twenty nineteen, there was a new identification made when
(34:53):
just such a work, portrait of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia,
was identified as an original Van Dyke.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Oh you're so happy talking about art, I am. I
love it and I really love his im I will
talk about it some in the behind the scenes, like
the way I plagued some of my friends by sending
them photographs of Van Dyke work and like, could you
believe this was penty four hundred years ago?
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I just mind boggling. I do have some listener mail
which comes from our listener Caitlin, and it is about
planners and specifically Planners and ADHD. Caitlyn writes, Hi, Holly
and Tracy, and Happy New Year. Listening to the New
Year's Day episode on planners and Almanacs, as well as
the behind the scenes, brought back a visceral memory of
being an elementary school and having the teacher distribute planners
(35:46):
to each student. They were August to June to align
with the school year, and every month there were little
quotes and fun facts, as well as so many holidays.
Every day when we were given homework, our teacher would
ask us to pull out our planners and write down
the details concerts, field trips, any other reason a nine
year old might need to know a date into the planner.
(36:06):
I inevitably would lose my planner several times a semester,
or fished out crumpled and unmarked from the bottom of
my backpack when challenged. Because I usually did my homework
in class after my other work, missing technical deadlines was
no big deal. Fast forward to age twenty three, and
it turned out I have ADHD. All of my efforts
and attempts at systems and bullet journals and calendars had
(36:28):
been thwarted, not by innate laziness or it not being
for me, but by brainworms. A few years out, I'm
on ADHD meds and my color coded dry erase calendar
lives with my fridge and is strictly up to date. Mostly.
Hope y'all are well, and I've attached some shark to
post photos as pet text. She was recently put on
a diet after being certified chonky at the VET, and
(36:51):
she hates it a lot. Yeah, I've had a cat
on a diet. He no like it one bit. She
also asks about accessibility when we plan our trips. The
answer is yes, but also it becomes difficult to gauge
accessibility when we're planning international trips sometimes, but we do
always consider it. It doesn't always work out, obviously, it's
kind of tricky on international travel. But I hope nobody
(37:13):
thinks that we're just ignoring that this cat is very cute.
She looks like a dilutey calico. It's hard to tell
case she's in shadow. She may be full of calico,
but the cutest thing on the planet. Listen, I love
a chunky cat.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
I also really like this email because while we talked
about planners and how some people love planners, we didn't
really talk about how planners can be very flum mixing
for people sometimes when they don't even really realize why.
And I think it's valid to discuss that, Like, there
are some people that just look at a planner and
it looks like torture. So while I love them because I,
(37:49):
you know, have a little bit of attention issues myself.
For me, that's like the good tool, but I understand
that doesn't work for everybody.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Anyway. I hope, whether you're a planner person or not,
that you're having a great start to the new year.
I suppose you could write us if you would wish
and share your experiences and maybe you're kiddies or puppies
or snakes or translats or whatever pets you have and enjoy.
I would love it if someone would send us.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Some some Corvid pictures. Anybody got a pet raven send
them along. You can do that at History podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
We're also on social media as Missed in History, and
you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app
and anywhere else you get your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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