35 Facts About Van Dyck

1.

Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Southern Netherlands and Italy.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,247
2.

Van Dyck was successful as an independent painter in his late teens, and became a master in the Antwerp guild in 1618.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,248
3.

Van Dyck worked in London for some months in 1621, then returned to Flanders for a brief time, before travelling to Italy, where he stayed until 1627, mostly in Genoa.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,249
4.

Van Dyck spent five years in Flanders after his return from Italy, and from 1630 was court painter for the archduchess Isabella, Habsburg Governor of Flanders.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,250
5.

Van Dyck is best known for his portraits of the aristocracy, most notably Charles I, and his family and associates.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,251
6.

Van Dyck became the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next 150 years.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,252
7.

Van Dyck painted mythological and biblical subjects, including altarpieces, displayed outstanding facility as a draughtsman, and was an important innovator in watercolour and etching.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,253
8.

Antoon van Dyck was born to prosperous parents in Antwerp and was the seventh of 12 children.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,254
9.

Van Dyck's father was Frans van Dyck, a silk merchant, and his mother was Maria Cupers, daughter of Dirk Cupers and Catharina Conincx.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,255
10.

In 1620, in Rubens's contract for the major commission for the ceiling of the Carolus Borromeuskerk, the Jesuit church at Antwerp, van Dyck is specified as one of the "discipelen" who was to execute the paintings to Rubens' designs.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,256
11.

In 1620, at the instigation of George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham, van Dyck went to England for the first time where he worked for King James I of England, receiving £100.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,257
12.

Van Dyck returned to Flanders after about four months, and then left in late 1621 for Italy, where he remained for six years.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,258
13.

Van Dyck was mostly based in Genoa, although he travelled extensively to other cities, and stayed for some time in Palermo in Sicily, where he was quarantined during the 1624 plague, one of the worst in Sicily's history.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,259
14.

Van Dyck was evidently very charming to his patrons, and, like Rubens, well able to mix in aristocratic and court circles, which added to his ability to obtain commissions.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,260
15.

Van Dyck remained in touch with the English court and helped King Charles's agents in their search for pictures.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,261
16.

Van Dyck sent some of his own works, including a self portrait with Endymion Porter, one of Charles's agents, his Rinaldo and Armida, and a religious picture for the Queen.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,262
17.

Van Dyck had painted Charles's sister, Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, at The Hague in 1632.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,263
18.

Van Dyck was well paid for his paintings in addition to this, at least in theory, as King Charles did not actually pay over his pension for five years, and reduced the price of many paintings.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,264
19.

Van Dyck was provided with a house on the River Thames at Blackfriars, then just outside the City of London, thus avoiding the monopoly of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,265
20.

Van Dyck painted many of the court, and himself and his mistress, Margaret Lemon.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,266
21.

Van Dyck's mortal remains and tomb were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,267
22.

Van Dyck tried to persuade Charles to commission large-scale series on the history of the Order of the Garter for the Banqueting House, Whitehall, for which Rubens had earlier completed the large ceiling paintings .

FactSnippet No. 1,209,268
23.

Some critics have blamed van Dyck for diverting a nascent, tougher English portrait tradition—of painters such as William Dobson, Robert Walker and Isaac Fuller—into what certainly became elegant blandness in the hands of many of van Dyck's successors, like Lely or Kneller.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,269
24.

Several of the most detailed are of Rye, a port for ships to the Continent, suggesting that van Dyck did them casually whilst waiting for wind or tide to improve.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,270
25.

Probably during his period in Antwerp after his return from Italy, van Dyck began his Iconography, which became a very large series of prints with half-length portraits of eminent contemporaries.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,271
26.

Van Dyck produced drawings, and for eighteen of the portraits he himself etched the heads and main outlines of the figure, for an engraver to work up: "Portrait etching had scarcely had an existence before his time, and in his work it suddenly appears at the highest point ever reached in the art".

FactSnippet No. 1,209,272
27.

Van Dyck left most of the printmaking to specialists, who engraved after his drawings.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,273
28.

Van Dyck's etched plates appear not to have been published until after his death, and early states are very rare.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,274
29.

Van Dyck continued to add to the series until at least his departure for England, and presumably added Inigo Jones whilst in London.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,275
30.

Van Dyck's brilliant etching style, which depended on open lines and dots, was in marked contrast to that of the other great portraitist in prints of the period, Rembrandt, and had little influence until the 19th century, when it had a great influence on artists such as Whistler in the last major phase of portrait etching.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,276
31.

Van Dyck's success led him to maintain a large workshop in London, which became "virtually a production line for portraits".

FactSnippet No. 1,209,277
32.

Van Dyck probably preferred to use trained Flemings, as no equivalent English training existed in this period.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,278
33.

Van Dyck became a very successful portrait and history painter in his native Antwerp.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,279
34.

Van Dyck Dyke brown is an early photographic printing process using the same colour.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,280
35.

When van Dyck was knighted in 1632, he anglicized his name to Vandyke.

FactSnippet No. 1,209,281