Van Dyck | Page 2

the most distinguished personages of the time.
The last nine years of Van Dyck's life were passed in England, where
the family of Charles I. and the brilliant group of persons forming his
court were the subjects of his final series of portraits. There were no
altar-pieces in this period. At the beginning of his English work Van
Dyck produced certain portraits unsurpassed during his whole life. The
well-known Charles I., with an equerry, in the Louvre, is perhaps the
best of these. His works after this were uneven in quality. His vitality
was drained by social dissipations, and he lost the ambition to grow.
Some features of the portraits became stereotyped, especially the hands.
Yet from time to time he rose to a high level.
A painter so easily moulded by his environment cannot justly take rank
among the world's foremost masters. A great creative mind Van Dyck
certainly had not, but, gifted assimilator that he was, he developed
many delightful qualities of his art. The combined results of his
borrowing and his own innate gifts make him a notable and indeed a
beloved figure in art history.
The leading note of his style is distinction. His men are all noblemen,
his women all great ladies, and his children all princes and princesses.
The same qualities of dignity and impressiveness are carried into his
best altar-pieces. Sentiment they have also in no insignificant degree.
It is perhaps naming only another phase of distinction to say that his
figures are usually characterized by repose. The sense of motion which

so many of Reynolds's portraits convey is almost never expressed in
Van Dyck's work, nor would it be consistent with his other qualities.
The magic gift of charm none have understood better when the subject
offered the proper inspiration. We see this well illustrated in many
portraits of young noblemen, such as the Duke of Lennox and
Richmond and Lord Wharton.
Van Dyck's clever technique has preserved for us the many rich fabrics
of his period, and his pictures would be a delight were these details
their sole attraction. Heavy velvet, with the light playing deliciously in
the creases, lustrous satins, broken by folds into many tints, delicate
laces, elaborate embroideries, gleaming jewels--these are the
never-failing accessories of his compositions. Yet while he loved rich
draperies, he was also a careful student of the nude. Examples of his
work range from the supple and youthful torso of Icarus to the huge
muscular body of the beggar receiving St. Martin's cloak. The
modelling of the Saviour's body in the Crucifixion and the Pietà shows
both scientific knowledge and artistic handling.
Generally speaking, Van Dyck was little of a psychologist. His patrons
belonged to that social class in which reserve is a test of breeding and
thoughts and emotions are sedulously concealed. To penetrate the mask
of the face and interpret the character of his sitter was an office he
seldom took upon himself to perform. Yet he was capable of profound
character study, especially in the portrayal of men. Even in so early a
work as the so-called portrait of Richardot and his son, he revealed
decided talent in this direction, while the portrait of Cardinal
Bentivoglio, of the Italian period, and the portrait of Wentworth, in the
English period, are masterly studies of the men they represent.
A common feature of his portraits is the averted glance of the sitter's
eyes. This fact is in itself a barrier to our intimate knowledge of the
subject, and also in a measure injures the sense of vitality expressed in
the work. It must be confessed that Van Dyck, disciple though he was
of Rubens and Titian, fell below these masters in the art of imparting
life to a figure.

In certain mechanical elements of his art Van Dyck was conspicuously
deficient. He seemed to have no ingenuity in devising poses for his
subjects. Sitting or standing, the attitude is usually more or less
artificial and constrained. The atmosphere of the studio is painfully
evident. Never by any accident did he seem to catch the sitter off guard,
so to speak, except in a few children's portraits. Here he expressed a
vivacity and charm which seemed impossible to him with adult
subjects.
In composition he is at his best in altar-pieces. In portrait groups, as in
the pictures of the children of Charles I., he apparently made no effort
to bring the separate figures into an harmonious unity. A single figure,
or half length, he placed on his canvas with unerring sense of right
proportion. Perhaps the best summary of Van Dyck's art has been made
by the English critic, Claude Phillips, in these words: His was "not
indeed one of the greatest creative individualities that have dominated
the world of art, but a talent as