Anthony van Dyck

Anthony van Dyck was a 17th-century Flemish artist, considered second in skill only to his teacher, Peter Paul Rubens. His adept use of bold colours and loose brushwork, which gave his fabrics — in particular silk — the appearance of sheen and fluidity, helped him rise to become the leading court painter of King Charles I in London.

He transformed English portraiture, forgoing its stiff and strict conventions to create informal, whimsical pictures, which would go on to inspire Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. The writhing compositions and exaggerated emotions of his religious and mythological scenes, meanwhile, helped establish the tenets of Baroque painting in northern Europe.

Born in Antwerp in 1599, by 1618 Van Dyck was Rubens’ lead assistant and a master of the city’s guild. After a short spell in England, painting pictures for the leading Jacobean patrons Thomas Howard and George Villiers, he spent about six years in Italy, absorbing the work of the Renaissance — in particular Titian, acquiring no fewer than 19 of his paintings.

Van Dyck returned to Antwerp in 1627, before travelling onto The Hague in 1631. Across Europe his portraits were sought after by Archduchess Isabella, governess of the Spanish Netherlands; Queen Mother Maria de’Medici of France; Frederik Hendrik, the Prince of Orange; and the Winter King and Queen, Frederick V of the Palatinate and Elizabeth Stuart.

By 1632 Van Dyck was back in London, knighted and named court painter to Charles I and his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. The decade saw him reach his apex, creating some of his most feted pictures, including Self-Portrait with a Sunflower; Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart; Charles I at the Hunt; and Cupid and Psyche.

In 1640, following Rubens’ death, he travelled to Antwerp, hoping to take his teacher’s place as the leader of the Antwerp School, but returned to London by May of the following year. The threat of civil war loomed in England though, unsettling his patrons and derailing his career. On 1 December, his wife Mary Ruthven, a lady in waiting to the queen, gave birth to their only child. Eight days later, following an illness, Van Dyck died, aged 42. He was buried in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, where his tomb was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666.