The artist’s second wife, wearing a felt hat trimmed with feathers, is seated in an arm-chair, and turned three-quarters to the left; on her lap is her little son, François; on the left her daughter, Claire-Jeanne, dressed in brown, plays with her white pinafore.
Painted in oil on panel. The picture is unfinished.
5 ft. 8¾ in. × 2 ft. 8½ in. (1·13 × 0·82.)
VAN DYCK’S SECOND ANTWERP PERIOD
Some of the master’s most precious works at the Louvre belong to his second Antwerp period, which extended from his return from Genoa in 1628 to his departure for England in 1632. It was probably then that he painted The Virgin and Child, with the Penitent Sinners (No. 1961) (Mary Magdalen, David, and the Prodigal Son), in which the influence of the Venetian colourists is so clearly to be noticed. Indeed, the bosom of the female penitent is copied from the nymph in Titian’s Education of Cupid at the Borghese Gallery, of which there is a drawing in the Chatsworth Sketch-book with the comment in the artist’s handwriting, “quel admirabil petto.” Shortly after his return from Italy he also painted The Virgin and Child with Donors (No. 1962), one of his greatest masterpieces. The Madonna is of a youthful, pure type, vastly different from the buxom Flemish women so often depicted by his master in saintly characters. The painting of the Infant’s body is as admirable as that of the kneeling Donors, and a spiritual connection is established by the action of the Child and the expression of the man towards whom He is holding out His hand.
The companion groups A Gentleman and a Child (No. 1973) and A Lady and her Daughter (No. 1974), date from about 1630. They are full of that aristocratic distinction which is the hall-mark of Van Dyck’s Genoese portraits, and which in his later English period was apt to degenerate into effeminacy. This air of distinction is also to be noted in the children, although they are perfectly natural in action and expression, and have none of that stiffness which makes so many of the earlier masters’ portraits of children look like undergrown men and women. The imposing equestrian portrait of Francisco d’Aytona, Marqués de Moncada (No. 1971), Generalissimus of the Spanish troops in the Netherlands, which in its general disposition recalls the portrait of Charles i. at Windsor Castle; the small study for it of the same sitter’s head and shoulders (No. 1972); and the portrait of The Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, Regent of the Netherlands (No. 1970), in the costume of the Sisters of St. Clare, whom she had joined after the death of her husband the Archduke Albrecht, belong to the same period. Then also was painted the Rinaldo in the Garden of Armida (No. 1966), which is probably the picture bought from the artist at Antwerp by Endymion Porter, on behalf of King Charles i., in March 1629, for the price of £78.
“LE ROI À LA CHASSE”
Van Dyck’s manner of life in England, as the petted Court painter of Charles i., and the factory-like output of his well-organised studio at Blackfriars, are too well known to need further comment. In justice to his fair fame it is necessary to draw a clear distinction between the innumerable replicas turned out by his assistants under his guidance, and such magnificent original works from the master’s own brush as the glorious Portrait of King Charles I. of England (No. 1967, [Plate XXIII.]), known as “Le Roi à la Chasse,” which is one of the proudest possessions of the French national collection. The king is seen, resting his gloved hand on a stick, in a glade, with the sea in the distance. Behind him are two attendants and his white charger pawing the ground in impatient action. The king’s noble, quiet dignity is such as to dominate the entire composition, without, however, the slightest hint of the theatrical. Here, as in most of his English portraits, Van Dyck has departed from the glowing sumptuousness of his earlier Venetian palette, and arrived at a cooler, mellow, and more personal harmony of decorative colour. As if conscious of the superior merit of this picture, which is more than a mere portrait of the king, and depicts the very personification of royalty, the artist, who was not in the habit of signing his pictures, inscribed on a stone the lettering
CAROLUS I REX MAGNÆ BRITANNIÆ · VAN DIICK F.
Painted for the king in 1635 for £100, it passed through many hands before it was bought by Louis xv. for Mme du Barry, by whom it was ceded in 1775 to his successor for 24,000 livres.