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Lot Essay
These arresting panels of Saint Paul and Saint Thomas belong to the now dispersed series of apostles that were painted by van Dyck between 1618-20, which formed one of the major projects of the artist’s early career in Antwerp. The pictures appear to have been inspired by Rubens, who produced a series of large panels of Christ and his Apostles in around 1610-12, which are now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Although it is debatable as to whether van Dyck saw Rubens’ originals, which, by 1618, had entered the collection of the Duke of Lerma, chief minister to Philip III of Spain, the artist would have unquestionably encountered the copies executed by his master’s assistants after he joined the studio in 1617. In February of the following year, the eighteen-year-old van Dyck enrolled in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke and, shortly thereafter, Rubens referred to his young prodigy in a letter to Dudley Carleton, in which he offered the celebrated collector a number of history paintings 'made by my best pupil' (Barnes et al., Van Dyck, A complete catalogue of the paintings, New Haven and London, 2004, p. 1). When executing his own series, the young van Dyck consciously distanced himself from Rubens’ precedent by working on a considerably smaller scale and presenting his subjects in different poses to those employed by his master.
Such was the success of van Dyck's Twelve Apostles that he is thought to have painted replicas of all or part of the series, and it is generally agreed that there could be as many as three autograph sets. However, due to the subsequent breaking-up of these sets, and the dispersal of the individual panels, retracing which work belonged to which set is inevitably complex. The task is further complicated by the fact that the apostles are strikingly dissimilar in terms of their treatment and there is by no means a coherent style within each of the different series. Scholars have long debated whether this was a conscious choice on the artist’s part, and attempts to reconstruct a chronological order for the various series have remained equally unresolved. The involvement of the artist’s assistants in the execution of the various series has also been well documented and was central to the case brought to court in 1660 by the canon of Antwerp, François Hillewerve (for a full discussion on the various series, see Alejandro Vergara and Friso Lammertse in the exhibition catalogue, The Young Van Dyck, Madrid, 2013, pp. 200-211).
These panels depicting Saint Paul and Saint Thomas, which are themselves decidedly dissimilar in their execution, can be compared with the pictures of almost identical dimensions (64 x 51 cm.) of the same saints that previously formed part of the Böhler series; that of Saint Paul is now in the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover; and Saint Thomas, which was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 24 January 2002, lot 174, for $2,095,750, is now in a private collection (ibid., p. 200, nos. 43 and 46). Lammertse, who dates the Apostles to between 1618 and 1620, considers the variation in style within each series to be deliberate, and observes that the handling of the aforementioned Saint Thomas was thought to be ‘an example of calm introspection, emphasized by the even but supple brushwork’ (ibid., p. 210). While the figure of Saint Thomas in the present lot is captured with smooth, fluent brushstrokes, the application of paint in the Saint Paul panel is more attacking and expressive: the artist articulates the apostle’s head with rich sweeping strokes while masterfully using the butt-end of his brush to indicate strands of hair caught in the light. The model for Saint Paul was also employed for the central character, immediately to the right of Christ, in van Dyck’s Suffer Little Children to Come unto Me (c. 1618-20; Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada).
Both panels are stamped with a makers-mark thought to be that of Guilliam Aertssen, whose brand is probably that found on the reverse of three panels from a group known as the Dresden series, now preserved in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden: Saints Peter, Paul and Bartholomew (ibid., p. 201).
Deemed by scholars at the time of the sale in 2014 (loc. cit.) to have been works from the artist’s studio, the attribution to van Dyck has since been endorsed by Dr. Christopher Brown following first-hand inspection of the panels and Dr. Susan Barnes (private communication following the 2014 sale).
Such was the success of van Dyck's Twelve Apostles that he is thought to have painted replicas of all or part of the series, and it is generally agreed that there could be as many as three autograph sets. However, due to the subsequent breaking-up of these sets, and the dispersal of the individual panels, retracing which work belonged to which set is inevitably complex. The task is further complicated by the fact that the apostles are strikingly dissimilar in terms of their treatment and there is by no means a coherent style within each of the different series. Scholars have long debated whether this was a conscious choice on the artist’s part, and attempts to reconstruct a chronological order for the various series have remained equally unresolved. The involvement of the artist’s assistants in the execution of the various series has also been well documented and was central to the case brought to court in 1660 by the canon of Antwerp, François Hillewerve (for a full discussion on the various series, see Alejandro Vergara and Friso Lammertse in the exhibition catalogue, The Young Van Dyck, Madrid, 2013, pp. 200-211).
These panels depicting Saint Paul and Saint Thomas, which are themselves decidedly dissimilar in their execution, can be compared with the pictures of almost identical dimensions (64 x 51 cm.) of the same saints that previously formed part of the Böhler series; that of Saint Paul is now in the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover; and Saint Thomas, which was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 24 January 2002, lot 174, for $2,095,750, is now in a private collection (ibid., p. 200, nos. 43 and 46). Lammertse, who dates the Apostles to between 1618 and 1620, considers the variation in style within each series to be deliberate, and observes that the handling of the aforementioned Saint Thomas was thought to be ‘an example of calm introspection, emphasized by the even but supple brushwork’ (ibid., p. 210). While the figure of Saint Thomas in the present lot is captured with smooth, fluent brushstrokes, the application of paint in the Saint Paul panel is more attacking and expressive: the artist articulates the apostle’s head with rich sweeping strokes while masterfully using the butt-end of his brush to indicate strands of hair caught in the light. The model for Saint Paul was also employed for the central character, immediately to the right of Christ, in van Dyck’s Suffer Little Children to Come unto Me (c. 1618-20; Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada).
Both panels are stamped with a makers-mark thought to be that of Guilliam Aertssen, whose brand is probably that found on the reverse of three panels from a group known as the Dresden series, now preserved in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden: Saints Peter, Paul and Bartholomew (ibid., p. 201).
Deemed by scholars at the time of the sale in 2014 (loc. cit.) to have been works from the artist’s studio, the attribution to van Dyck has since been endorsed by Dr. Christopher Brown following first-hand inspection of the panels and Dr. Susan Barnes (private communication following the 2014 sale).