It would not have been difficult, by all accounts, for Vandyck to have selected a bride from the noblest and most wealthy in the land, so generally admired was he by the fair sex; but his friends, the King and the Duke of Buckingham, had already arranged a suitable match, desirable in every way, excepting that the lady was poor, a fact which seemed an oversight in the circumstances, or rather in Vandyck’s circumstances.
Mary Ruthven was the granddaughter of the unfortunate Earl of Gowrie. Her father, suspected of complicity in the so-called conspiracy, had in consequence not only been imprisoned, but his property confiscated; therefore the winsome lady’s dower consisted of goodness, beauty, and gentle birth, but tocher the lassie had none, excepting a small portion given her as Lady of the Queen’s Household. She was much esteemed at Court. During his residence in England Vandyck had paid flying visits to his native country, and we hear of him, in 1634, serving as Dean of the Guild of St. Luke’s at Antwerp, which, be it remarked, is the date of the magnificent portrait, in this same gallery of Panshanger, of John of Nassau Siegen, and his family.
After his marriage he proceeded once more with his bride to his native city, where they were received with every possible demonstration of respect and affection. Sir Anthony, then, hearing that Louis XIII. intended to have the walls of the Louvre adorned with paintings, after the fashion of those by Rubens in the Luxembourg, went to Paris in hopes of obtaining the order, but in this design he was frustrated, and, disappointed and depressed, he returned to England. It was a dreary time. His Royal and private friends were all involved in trouble and perplexity, through the gathering of heavy clouds on the political horizon. His friend Lord Strafford had perished on the scaffold; the King was absent from London; the Queen had sought safety in France. Vandyck’s spirits sank, and he gave himself up to a fatal and visionary consolation.
In the pursuit of the philosopher’s stone, he became a professed alchemist, and, as it was well said, ‘the gold he had gained by his labours fast melted away in the crucible.’
He would stand for hours over a hot fire, which conduced not a little to undermine his failing health; he grew haggard and wrinkled while still in the prime of life. The King, on his return to England, hearing of his friend’s illness, sent his own physician to minister to the patient, holding out, it was said, a large sum of money in the event of a cure. But human aid was unavailing; a severe attack of gout, combined with other maladies, proved fatal, and on the 9th December 1641, the man who by many has been esteemed the chief of the world’s portrait-painters breathed his last. Followed by a large retinue of friends, he was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was but eight days before he died that a daughter was born to him, and on the very date of his death there was an entry in the register of St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, ‘Justiniana, daughter of Sir Anthony Vandyck and his lady, baptized 9th December 1641.’
Whatever ignorance or mismanagement of money matters the great painter had shown during his life, his last will was most praiseworthy and considerate in all points, and he had waited until the birth of his child to complete the same. There was not much to leave, but no one he loved or esteemed was forgotten; wife, child, sisters, servants, were all remembered; even the poor in the two parishes—that of his residence and that of his burial—had a small sum dealt out to them. Sir Anthony Vandyck’s widow married a Welsh baronet, Sir Robert Pryse, as his second wife, but they had no children. Justiniana married Sir John Stepney of Prendergast, Pembroke (their grandson was George Stepney, the poet), and her second husband was Martin de Carbonell. She received a pension from King Charles II.
No. 10.
FRANÇOIS DUQUESNOY, DETTO IL FIAMMINGO, SCULPTOR.
Green, red, and white slashed dress. Black cloak. White collar and cuffs. He is sitting.