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.
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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.
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Van Dyck was successful as an independent painter in his late teens, and became a master in the Antwerp guild in 1618.
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Van Dyck is best known for his portraits of the aristocracy, most notably Charles I, and his family and associates.
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Van Dyck became the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next 150 years.
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Van Dyck painted mythological and biblical subjects, including altarpieces, displayed outstanding facility as a draughtsman, and was an important innovator in watercolour and etching.
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Antoon van Dyck was born to prosperous parents in Antwerp and was the seventh of 12 children.
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Van Dyck's father was Frans van Dyck, a silk merchant, and his mother was Maria Cupers, daughter of Dirk Cupers and Catharina Conincx.
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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.
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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.
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Van Dyck remained in touch with the English court and helped King Charles's agents in their search for pictures.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Van Dyck painted many of the court, and himself and his mistress, Margaret Lemon.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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Van Dyck left most of the printmaking to specialists, who engraved after his drawings.
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Van Dyck's etched plates appear not to have been published until after his death, and early states are very rare.
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Van Dyck continued to add to the series until at least his departure for England, and presumably added Inigo Jones whilst in London.
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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.
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Van Dyck's success led him to maintain a large workshop in London, which became "virtually a production line for portraits".
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Van Dyck probably preferred to use trained Flemings, as no equivalent English training existed in this period.
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Van Dyck became a very successful portrait and history painter in his native Antwerp.
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Van Dyck Dyke brown is an early photographic printing process using the same colour.
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When van Dyck was knighted in 1632, he anglicized his name to Vandyke.
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